20 - The Villain in Hitchcock: “Does He Look Like a ‘Wrong One’ to You?”

Summary

Within Hitchcock's film, the villain represents a particular character type, or set of types, like the girl-on-the-threshold-of-womanhood (as I call her in Hitchcock – The Murderous Gaze) or the policeman who uses his official powers for his own private ends. As I argue in this chapter, the Hitchcock villain, master of the art of murder, is also an allegorical stand-in for Hitchcock himself, the master of “the art of pure cinema.”

Numerous observers have noted that Hitchcock's villains are often the most interesting characters in their films – the most charming, and, strangely, even the most sympathetic. Hitchcock often seems to identify – however exactly we understand this term – at least as much with his villains as with his protagonists. (As I argue in the chapter “Vertigo: The Unknown Woman in Hitchcock,” his identification with his female characters is equally strong.)

Most often, Hitchcock's villains possess the sang-froid of the gamesman, who treats matters of life and death as merely aesthetic matters. Just think of the moment in The Thirty-nine Steps (1935) when the Professor (Geoffrey Tearle), with a grin that invites an appreciative grin in return, holds up his hand, which is missing the top joint of its little finger, to disclose to Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) that he is the diabolical mastermind Hannay has been warned to be on the lookout for.

Villains are not the only Hitchcock characters who cultivate the style of a gamesman/aesthete, however.