I’ve seen this film quite a few times over the years and have found in it plenty of support for the usual readings. Sometimes it’s a slightly campy sci-fi horror, sometimes a Freudian melodrama (“With all due respect to Oedipus …”), sometimes a sadistic fantasy about repressing female sexuality. But what struck me on this most recent viewing is how genuinely touching the film is. In particular, the film’s emphasis on Jessica Tandy’s brilliant performance (which I always liked but never quite understood) reveals the sensitivity and even humanism with which the film approaches its characters. Tandy’s Lydia is the exact opposite of Hitchcock’s usual bitchy, Oedipal mother-figures. Indeed, she is simply lonely, uncertain, and deeply frightened at losing her son’s affection. Melanie Daniels’ concurrent need for mothering seems to me a little overdetermined in this context, but it nonetheless balances the film’s emotional center, offering something that is at least as interesting as the perversity, reactionary sexual politics, or flat-out mysogyny more often perceived in the film. It is strange that our interest in cataloguing Hitchcock’s perversions so often blinds us to a more generous reading of his work.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm Print
15 Apr 2005 1:21 PM | Comments (1)
I just read that Michael Bay is producing a remake of this film; somehow I feel this version will be miles away from touching (though he did direct that moving love scene involving Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and a box of animal crackers in Armageddon).
Beth
28 April 2005
6:15 AM
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