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Freud's themes in movies are not uncommon, but who was the first to introduce Freud's psychoanalysis into movies? It's Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock’s films often show psychopaths, and many people suspect that he is a voyeur, sadist and misogynist. In his most famous film " Psycho " (Psycho, 1960), he perfectly showed the Oedipus plot and personality split. The protagonist Norman Bates becomes the representative of the perverted killer. That year, when Norman dressed up as his mother and slashed the blonde girl in the shower with a knife, the audience broke out with the highest scream in history, enough to take a photo in history.
Freud put forward the concept of "Oedipus plot" in his book "Analysis of Dreams" . He analyzed the ancient Greek tragedy poet Sophocles's "Oedipus King" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet" , Pointed out: "The destiny of all of us is to direct our first sexual impulse to our mother, and to direct our original hatred and primitive desire to kill against our father."
Norman Bates did not forget his love for his mother and jealousy for his father like ordinary people did, and thus became a mentally ill person. He did not suppress his original desires, so he killed his mother and stepfather, and later became schizophrenic due to a heavy sense of guilt.
Not only did Norman have Oedipus psychology, his mother also hated any woman who was close to Norman because of her "lovers". Oedipus and Oedipus became the twin themes of some Hitchcock films, or as the narrative background. Such as "Easy Virtue" (1928), "Notorious" (1946), "Strangers on a Train" (1951), "North by Northwest" (North by Northwest, 1959), "Fright" "Note", "The Birds" (The Birds, 1963), "Marnie" (Marnie, 1964). In these films, the protagonist often has a strong mother who spoils him too much, and these protagonists are often male. The role of father is missing, either he lost his father at an early age, or he didn't mention his father at all.
Such themes appear so frequently in Hitchcock's films that people cannot help but connect with Hitchcock's childhood. What kind of people are his parents?
Hitchcock mentioned many times that he was frightened by his mother when he was a child, and even said in a funny way on a TV show that when he was three months old, his mother made a "poof" sound by his little bed to scare him, the bottom The audience laughed and asked, do you remember this? Hitchcock put on his usual serious face.
However, the style of Hitchcock's film was indeed influenced by his parents. Hitchcock was born in 1899 in a Catholic family in the small town of Leytonstone in London, England. Father William runs a fruit and vegetable shop, and mother Emma is of Irish descent.
Hitchcock’s father was a devout Catholic. Hitchcock was born on Sunday. The whole family remembered it because it was "the only Sunday in her life not to go to church."
When I was a child, for a few years, Hitchcock would stand at the foot of his mother's bed every night, performing what he called "late night confession". The mother listened in bed, and then blamed him for his son's wrongdoing. When Hitch was young and naughty, his father wrote a letter to the police chief and the police put him in a detention center. Hitchcock claimed that this experience caused him a lifelong fear of the police.
After experiencing a repressive and harsh life, his perspective on life has also become weird. Hitchcock's themes emerge from these childhood shadows: anxiety, prying, original sin, fear, dislocation, wronged people, evil patriarchal figures, attachment to and resistance to mothers...
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Comparing the mother and son in Hitchcock's film, you will find that the target of the mother's influence is often a man. This man is usually an older unmarried man who lives with his mother or has close contacts with his mother. Interestingly, there is no such a mother role for any married protagonist, such as "The Wrong Man" (The Wrong Man, 1956). The protagonist who was wronged as a robber has a gray-haired mother, but only one A mother who simply worries about her son.
If he is an unmarried man, he will inevitably be affected by the sickness of his old mother. He often has two contradictory feelings towards his mother at the same time, one is the morbid dependence on the mother, and the other is the resistance to the mother's control. It developed to the extreme and formed the personality of Norman Bates in "The Cry"-he complained about his mother's arbitrariness, and at the same time he said that "boys' best friend is mother".
The image of Hitchcock's sick old mother appeared in his silent films as early as "Sweet Girl" .
In "Beauty Plan" , the abnormal symbiosis between mother and child is more obvious. Sebastian is over 50 years old and still lives with his mother, and is controlled by his strict mother everywhere.
There is a scene that reflects the actual relationship between Sebastian and his mother. He finds that his wife is a spy and asks his mother for help. He sits at the foot of the bed with his face buried in his hands, weak and helpless, crying in a low voice, his mother Hold the cigarette, stand beside him, let him leave everything to her to solve.
In the previous scene, the two of them were sitting on both sides of the room. Sebastian was so fascinated by Alicia that he would not listen to her mother's advice and insisted on marrying her home. The two scenes are in sharp contrast and tell us that in this family, the old mother is the one who gives orders.
"The Train Stranger" reveals the influence of the mother from the very beginning. On the train, Bruno wore a tie embroidered with a lobster pattern (designed by Hitchcock himself), and he told Guy that his mother bought it for him. He is a perverted killer with a mental illness, but his mother regards him as a child who has not grown up and loves to play pranks-when she comes out, she is cutting the nails of her son who looks more than 40 years old.
The mother's spirit does not look normal, just look at her painting of Saint Francis.
When Guy's girlfriend told her that her son had killed a girl, her reaction was also confusing, she looked a little scared, but she didn't take it to heart.
Although Bruno's father is still there, the setting of the story is intriguing-Bruno wanted to kill through exchange and get rid of his father. The Oedipus complex couldn't be more obvious.
Thornhill, the protagonist of "Northwest" has been married twice, and he can't do anything without his mother without a father. At the beginning of the film, he asked his assistant to call his mother, "remind her that we are watching the show tonight." I also thought that my mother was playing cards and had no phone call, so she had to send a telegram to her mother.
Was caught in the police station, the officer told him that he could call the lawyer, and he hit-no doubt, called his mother. Then we were surprised to find that Thornhill's mother looked almost the same age as him! (Actually, the actress is only seven years older than Thornhill’s actor Gary Grant.) She is elegant, fashionable, innocent, and nasty, and her dialogue with Thornhill is more like her peers than her mother.
Although Thornhill left his mother in order to get rid of the stalker (are you afraid that the other party will kidnap her), he still called his mother to report the action on the way.
After that, the old mother didn't show up again. After all, Hitchcock wanted to make a light-hearted and humorous film, not the usual film with dark psychological mystery.
In "The Birds" , although Hitchcock is an old man himself, his protagonist still cannot escape from his mother's control. Mitch is an older, unmarried, father-bereaved, and living with his mother and sister. He was attracted by a rich daughter, who chased home with a "love bird".
In the first few shots, Hitchcock highlighted his mother's unhappiness and vigilance towards this uninvited suitor. Her look at Milani (even if someone else is talking, the camera stays on her mother's face) planted a seed in the audience's heart, which took root in the next few scenes.
The camera's perspective suggests the absolute status of the mother in the family. When they walked to the house, the mother kept walking in front, which was the focus of vision.
Although the grown-up son is the backbone of the family, he is always restrained by his mother, especially a weak mother who has recently lost her husband. This kind of personality contrasts with the determined and calm Milani.
The mother was still hostile to the woman who broke into the house. "Is it she who jumped into the Roman fountain last year?" "I heard she was naked at the time."
Later, the ex-girlfriend explained the reason for her mother's reaction-she was afraid that any woman could give Mitch the love that was the only thing she could give him. She lost her husband and was even more afraid of being abandoned by her only son.
What's interesting is that the mother's hairstyle and dress in the film are very similar to the heroine. They are all wearing pearl necklaces, wearing similar style suits, and their manners are equally calm and elegant. For Hitchcock, who is known for his demanding details, this is by no means a coincidence, but a deliberate act. It is a hint to the protagonist Oedipus. He chose a woman who resembles his mother in appearance.
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If the image of the mother in the above films reveals the mental illness, then the mother in "The Terror" is completely demonized . The decorative style that symbolizes decay and the old order, the shawl with crocheted flowers, the print of a corpse on the bed...
And, the mother's face.
This film reveals the influence of "mother" everywhere. In the opening movie, Marion and her lover were having a tryst in the hotel room. She was tired of sneaking, "We can date, but we must be fair. In my house, my mother's picture is hung above the fireplace, and my sister helps me cook steak for three people." The lover asked back: "After eating the steak, send my sister to the movie and reverse the picture of my mother?"
Marion went to work and asked a colleague (played by Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia) for an aspirin. The colleague said she didn’t have aspirin, but there was something else. “My mother’s doctor gave me it on my wedding day, Teddy. I was very angry when I found out that I was taking the stabilizer."
Marion asked her if she had a phone call. Patricia said, "Teddy called me. My mother called and asked if Teddy had called."
Hitchcock cleverly added the negative influence of his mother to the character's behavior and psychology, so later we became more and more convinced that it was Norman's mother who killed the women who tried to approach him.
Some researchers believe that Hitchcock 's image of a mother in "The Cry" was a product of social panic in the 1950s. At that time, juvenile delinquency was a serious and urgent problem in American society. It originated from mothers' spoiling and overprotection of their children, which caused the children, and the United States itself, to die in spoiling.
Hitchcock's film shows the world the dangers that "mother"'s overprotective and distorted love may bring.
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