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Alfred Hitchcock

A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone

It's gotta be the hair

By Alan Vanneman

See the introduction to this nine-part photo study.

Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed with women's hair. It was the ultimate symbol of women's sexual power — a power that Hitchcock found both irresistible and terrifying. Any force so powerful had to be deadly in the end. The famous "Hitchcock blondes" — Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, and Tippi Hedren — almost always wore their hair in a compulsively arranged manner, suggesting Hitchcock's desire to make things perfect and keep them under control.

Kim Novak was not a real Hitchcock blonde (Hitch thought she was vulgar), but he used her in Vertigo, a film that is essentially an examination of his own fascination with feminine appearance. Jimmy Stewart fantasizes about Novak as the perfect woman when he sees her in disguise, more or less, as "Madeleine Elster."

When he discovers that she is really the "common" Judy Barton, he sets out to remake her.

Some men have a "Madonna/Whore" complex. Hitchcock had a "Mother/Lover" complex. In films like Notorious and The Birds, the lovely heroine is confronted by a suspicious and unlovely mother. A similarity in hairdos suggests an unhealthy relationship. In Notorious, Ingrid Bergman has to deal with a suspicious and ultimately murderous mother-in-law, played by Leopoldine Konstantin.

In The Birds, Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy wear almost identical hairdos (and it's hard to imagine why either chooses such a compulsive do).

Hitchcock generally did not like loose hair on women. He seemed to find it "vulgar" rather than free. However, in his last real Hitchcock film, Marnie, the eponymous heroine, played by Tippi Hedren, lets her hair down when she goes riding, and when she puts her head on the lap of her far-from-classy mother.

Marnie and her mother form another "Mother/Lover" pair, but the grimmest pair of all is Mrs. Bates and Marion Crane. The hair of the living is not very important in Psycho. The blonde allure has fled. All we are left with is Mrs. Bates' grim iron bun, and Norman's cheap wig. Hitchcock forces us to confront his own nightmare, the skull beneath the skin.

Click any of the links below for additional categories/motifs, or to return to the intro page:

Houses † Staircases † Women's Hair † Hands † Eyes

The Uncanny † The Vortex † Notorious Sequence

The Man Who Knew Too Much Sequence

November 2003 | Issue 42
Copyright © 2003 by Alan Vanneman

ALSO: Check out other fine articles and reviews by the author.

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