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Appendix: Hitchcock’s Appearances One reason Alfred Hitchcock is the world’s best-known film director is surely his signature appearance in many of his films. But there is more than just identification when Hitchcock steps into his frame. He is very careful about how and where he will appear. The manner of his appearance often provides a crucial approach to the meaning of the film.1 But not always. Often he appears just for fun, as in his jocular walkons in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. When he appears in Micawberish garb in Under Capricorn there is a delightful incongruity about his costume that no one else in the scene has. For we expect actors to wear costumes. Hitchcock we don’t take as an actor but as a man puckishly playing dress up.2 This is true of all the Hitchcock appearances. Their first effect is comedy, our chuckle of recognition as we spot the chubby elf and pride that we caught the in-joke. More seriously, the Hitchcock appearances cause a ripple in the narrative flow, a disturbance in the film’s surface.3 The other people in the film are actors playing roles. Hitchcock is himself, not to be identified by his character within this film but known from his association in other films and (later) from the impudent persona of his television series . The intrusion of this real person into the fictional setting heightens the tension between our reality and the reality presumed by the fiction. It also provides a frisson, a jarring surprise of the sort that Hitchcock loves to mine his films with, say, by having a cigarette butted in a jar of cold cream or in a fried egg. Hitchcock’s appearances also remind us that we are watching a film, that we are being manipulated by a rhetorician who is so skillful 218 Appendix and so confident that he can remind us that we are in his hands without fear of losing his hold. In this respect Hitchcock’s appearances work like the frequent references to the idea of the play in Elizabethan drama. These effects give a certain prominence, an emphasis, to the scenes in which Hitchcock appears. For example, Hitchcock’s casual walk past the camera in Murder! occurs just after the landlady has threatened to send her son to jail for punishment. As Hitchcock was as a child once sent to the police for brief jailing, his appearance personalizes the anecdote in the film. The remainder of Hitchcock’s appearances are here discussed according to their two general functions. In the first group the appearances work in an emblematic way, encapsulating major themes from the film as a whole. Here Hitchcock gives a small scene or activity prominence by doing it himself. In the second group his appearances depend on our taking him as the creator of the world in the film, the maker, the god. In this latter category, Hitchcock’s appearances anticipate —or inspire—Godard’s functioning as informer in A bout de souffle and as questioner/reporter/prober in later films. 1. The Emblematic In Blackmail we have a full frontal view of Hitchcock reading a book in the underground, while the heroes sit in profile on the right. The placement on the screen and the fullness of Hitchcock’s face gives this bit player an emphasis denied the stars. The artist, the blackmailer, and the painted clown will be peripheral figures that again displace the heroes, giving us a wider worldview than they have. More importantly: Hitchcock is trying to read a book but is disturbed by a noisy and pesky little boy. The reading is the important thing. Throughout the film Hitchcock systematically explores the limitations of aural communication, contrasting the new sound film with the venerable (and read) silent film. Hitchcock’s reading relates to the classical culture represented by the British Museum, with its huge, silent gods, through which the final chase is run. The traditional— reading, culture, the silent film, a morality as rigorous and impersonal 219 Hitchcock’s Appearances as Scotland Yard—is tested by the more flexible and pragmatic modes and morality of the modern. Hitchcock in the underground lends his weight to the traditional—and finds the new rather needlessly noisy.4 As Hitchcock walks by in The 39 Steps he tosses away a paper wrapper . In the background Hannay and the mysterious lady mount a bus, which happens to advertise an insurance...

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