Hitchcock Themes & Motifs

Basic list of themes and motifs

Motif list from Hitchcock's Motifs by Michael Walker

A basic list of recurring elements:

"absurdist geography"
"banality of evil"
betrayal
birds
blank stare
blondes
Catholic iconography
decorum, social order
disguise
doubling, Doppelgangers, twins
evil erupts in ordinary surroundings
exchange of guilt
eyes
falling, dangling
fantasy vs. reality, illusion
the family
fetishism
film and reality, film as metaphor
food, eating
the "gaze"
guilt
handcuffs, restraint, bondage
homosexuality
imagination
logic vs. intuition
love
loyalty
making someone over
masculinity
maturity
mirrors
mothers, "Momism," Oedipal conflict
obsession
passion
police, authority figures
religious notions: guilt, repression, suffering, redemption
secrets
sex and death
shadows
suffering and its value
suspicion
travel, movement through space
trust
windows, curtains
women, femininity
voyeurism, "scopophilia"

Michael Walker's list of motifs

Hitchcock's Motifs, by Michael Walker (Univ. of Amsterdam Press, 2005) provides extended discussion, from a psychoanalytical perspective, of recurring elements in Hitchcock's films. Below is a condensed version of Walker's list of "key motifs":

Bed Scene
- couples and beds
- beds and the police

Blondes and brunettes
- Blondes versus brunettes
- blond iconography

Cameo appearances

Children

Confined spaces
- bathrooms and washrooms
- confinement and concealment
- cages and bars: fears of imprisonment

The corpse

Dogs and cats

Doubles

Entry through a window

Exhibitionism / voyeurism / the look

Food and meals
- food and marriage
- food and sex
- food and murder
- food and guilt
- chickens and eggs

Guilt and confession
- Catholic overtones
- transference of guilt
- guilt, confession, and the police

Handcuffs and bondage

Hands
- male hands / female hands
- held wrists
- damaged hands
- holding hands

Heights and falling

Homosexuality
- gay undercurrents
- homosexuality, espionage, and the look

Jewelry
- greed and status
- female desire
- female beauty / male power

Keys and handbags

Lights

The MacGuffin

Mothers and houses

Portraits, paintings and painters
- modern art

Public disturbances

Spectacles

Staircases

Trains and boats / planes and buses

Water and rain