The Possessive Passions of Hitchcock’s Villains

Abstract

The Possessive Passions of Hitchcock’s Villains Lesley Brill (bio) Thinking about love in Hitchcock’s films, why might one focus on antagonists? Because, as it happens, we can learn almost as much about love from Hitchcock’s villains as from his heroines and heroes. Light is defined by darkness, heat by cold, wealth by poverty, and love by such opposites as greed, lust, egotism, and—for Hitchcock, anyway—what he saw as amorous deviations. Almost all opposition to true love in Hitchcock’s films involves a desire to possess and control someone and, usually, something as well: money, social status, forbidden knowledge, political power, and so on. Avarice as an accompanying vice is especially common among the people attempting to thwart Hitchcock’s lovers. The theme of possession takes multiple forms and has various admixtures. For all that variety, however, possessiveness recurs as a crucial feature of the antagonists in most of Hitchcock’s movies. To a considerable degree, moreover, Hitchcock’s villains are themselves so fully focused on their desire for what they wish to possess or to maintain possession of, that they become its victims. They are not exactly possessed in a theological sense, but they can be seen as in thrall to their own evil. The heroes and heroines of Hitchcock’s films frequently share some characteristics of what makes the villains villainous, the overcoming or ridding of which becomes part of their achieving true love. This comprises an especially important function of Hitchcock’s antagonists: besides serving as impediments to true love, they also underscore obstacles to fulfillment within protagonists themselves. [End Page 121] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Levitt attempts to embrace Patsy in The Pleasure Garden. I address some of the specific forms these possessive passions take and the issues they are associated with, using examples from films across the full range of Hitchcock’s career. They illustrate various aspects of opposites or opponents to love, but this essay does not offer a comprehensive survey. Often a character fits into several categories which are not exclusive, and which flow into one another. The last section of the essay, on The Trouble with Harry, inverts the arguments of the other sections. As the possessive opponents of love show what love is not, so The Trouble with Harry shows what corrupted love is not. Destructive Possession “Murder is a kind of making love, a kind of possessing.” —Patricia Highsmith, diary entry 7/1/501 In the first of Hitchcock’s completed surviving films, The Pleasure Garden (1926), the villain’s urge to possess the heroine is straightforward and ultimately murderous. Largely ignored by [End Page 122] Hitchcock scholars, The Pleasure Garden, as Marc Strauss has shown, has a visual sophistication and a thematic focus on love that anticipates much of the rest of its director’s career.2 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Daisy handcuffed by Joe in The Lodger. The healthy erotic energy of true love finds its opposite in greedy lust. As a “motto” in Young and Innocent (1937) puts it, “love calls but once, though passion oft.” The principal antagonist of The Pleasure Garden, Levitt (Miles Mander), desires to sexually possess Patsy (Virginia Valli) (fig. 1). He attempts at first to realize his goal outside of marriage, then succeeds with a bad-faith union that leaves him free to desert Patsy and return to his mistress abroad. When his wife unexpectedly arrives, he drowns his now inconvenient native paramour; then, during a guilty hallucination, he attempts to kill Patsy as well. Jill (Carmelita Geraghty), the faithless fiancée of the hero (John Stewart), embodies another form of possessiveness, the desire for fame and worldly goods, which she procures by trading on the lusts of those who can provide such things. In The Lodger (1927), Detective Joe (Malcolm Keen), a foil to the eponymous hero (Ivor Novello), handcuffs Daisy (June Tripp) (fig. 2), and declares that he will take full possession of her later: “After I put a rope round The Avenger’s neck, I’ll put [End Page 123] a ring round Daisy’s finger.” This is an act of possession that does...