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Hitchcock’s Hollywood Career

1. Career overview: “master of suspense” in England (1922-1940) then the US (1940-mid 70s)

2. Types of films

--political suspense

--psychological suspense

a. Suspense: uncertainty of outcome between equally likely possibilities

b. Hitchcockian suspense: evil lurks just below the visible surface of everyday reality:

--“Keys” (key objects)

c. Sympathetic villains

d. Doubling

e. Transference of guilt

1. When and how?

2. Character vs. audience knowledge

3. Suspense and melodrama

--Roaring Twenties : gangster film conventions through the mode of melodrama

--here (Notorious 1946): suspense film conventions work through strategies of melodrama: note the moral functions of suspense in Hitchcock’s films in general, and in its view of victimization here

--suspense “keys” in Notorious?

--family; social pressure; entrapment and victimization?

--compare to similar strategies in Best Years