Film Criticism (2001) - "Stage Fright": Alfred Hitchcock's Fear of Acting
Details
- article: "Stage Fright": Alfred Hitchcock's Fear of Acting
- author(s): John Fawell
- journal: Film Criticism (2001)
- issue: volume 26, issue 1, pages 25-41
- journal ISSN: 0163-5069
- publisher: Allegheny College
- keywords: Acting, Actors, Alastair Sim, Alfred Hitchcock, American cinema, Black & white films, Cary Grant, Character, Claude Chabrol, Claude Rains, Critics, Daughters, Donald Spoto, Eve Gill (Character), Fathers, Feature films, Film (Productions), Film (USA), Film directors, Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games (1991) by Thomas M. Leitch, François Truffaut, Hitchcock's Films (1965) by Robin Wood, Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films (1979) by Éric Rohmer & Claude Chabrol, James Mason, Jane Wyman, John Fawell, Marlene Dietrich, Melodramas, Montgomery Clift, Motion pictures, Mystery Films, New York City, New York, North by Northwest (1959), Notorious (1946), Patricia Hitchcock, Paul Newman, Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Relationships, Richard Todd, Robin Wood, Roger O. Thornhill, Role playing, Slavoj Žižek, Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), Sybil Thorndike, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock (1983) by Donald Spoto, Themes, Thomas M. Leitch, Thrillers, Tippi Hedren, Vertigo (1958), Young and Innocent (1937), Éric Rohmer
Links
Abstract
Gene Phillips, for example, typifies the general response to the film when he notes that the film's opening scene (wherein a stage curtain lifts to reveal a busy street in downtown London) "reminds us that, as Shakespeare puts it, all the world is a stage and anyone can for his own private purposes get caught up in role playing in daily life as much as an actor in a play" (Phillips, 130). The film represents a rich commentary on acting-acting in the theater, acting in real life, film acting, the acting techniques of the actors working for Hitchcock on the film, and maybe most importantly, the acting aspirations of his daughter Patricia, who was at the time of the filming of Stage Fright an aspiring actress and student at the Royal Academy of Art, as Jane Wyman's character, Eve, is in Stage Fright.
Article
Stage Fright has received a great deal less critical attention than a number of Hitchcock films. Certainly, from the time of the film's release it has been recognized that there is in Stage Fright some clever play on the role of acting both in the theater and in real life. Gene Phillips, for example, typifies the general response to the film when he notes that the film's opening scene (wherein a stage curtain lifts to reveal a busy street in downtown London) "reminds us that, as Shakespeare puts it, all the world is a stage and anyone can for his own private purposes get caught up in role playing in daily life as much as an actor in a play"(Phillips, 130). The trouble is that critics have tended to state this idea and then quickly move on to the next film in the Hitchcock filmography, one they are usually more anxious to get to and more voluble in analyzing: Strangers on a Train.
This does not seem quite fair to Stage Fright which, it appears to me, is more than just a reworking of the "life is a stage" idea. The film represents a rich commentary on acting-acting in the theater, acting in real life, film acting, the acting techniques of the actors working for Hitchcock on the film, and maybe most importantly, the acting aspirations of his daughter Patricia, who was at the time of the filming of Stage Fright an aspiring actress and student at the Royal Academy of Art, as Jane Wyman's character, Eve, is in Stage Fright. Even Kristin Thompson's more developed study of the theme of acting in Stage Fright does not do justice to the cleverness and multitudinous of Hitchcock's commentary on acting in this film.
Critics have also, I think, underestimated how helpful it can be, in analyzing this film, to keep in mind its autobiographical elements. Truffaut commented on the autobiographical flavor of the film in his interview with Hitchcock on Stage Fright, remarking on the similar appearances of Patricia Hitchcock and Jane Wyman (Patricia served as Wyman's double in some scenes) and describing the film as "somehow paternal, a family picture" (Truffaut, 190). Spoto too has noted the resemblance between Pat and Wyman and speculated that "Pat's request to stay on for an extended term at the Royal Academy that year might well have further encouraged Hitchcock's gentle gibes at apprentice actors" (Spoto, 334).
Here too, though, the critics have tended to note the phenomenon and then move on, whereas I would argue that keeping the autobiographical import of the film in our mind as we watch it adds a great resonance to many key scenes and lines of dialogue. If anything makes Stage Fright unique among the rest of Hitchcock's oeuvre it is the film's strong paternal quality. The father-daughter relationship in this film is stronger than in any of Hitchcock's other films, and so much of the film contemplates the psychology of a young aspiring actress that it is hard not to see the film as a kind of filmic equivalent to the letter a father might send his daughter as she finishes her studies and stands on the brink of life. Rohmer and Chabrol caught this quality in the film, early on in the annals of Hitchcock studies, when they lauded its attentiveness "to the gentle poetry of gracious gestures, to the freshness of a young girl's soul" (Rohmer and Chabrol, 104).
Commodore Gill
Critics have noted the similarities between Pat Hitchcock's situation and that of Eve, but have noticed less the similarities between Hitchcock and Eve's father, Commodore Gill (played with quiet clownishness by Alistair Sim). The Commodore, more often than any other character in the film, seems ...
