Hitchcock’s blondes and how the wizard of suspense made them immortal

Alfred Hitchcock went down in cinema history for his unique genius for turning his actresses into subjects of fascination and drivers of tension based on icy sexuality. Also because of the controversial treatment – between respect, contempt and harassment – with which he manipulated them. But as if it was one of the tricks or unexpected twists that he cultivated as a great magician in his films, Hitch gave us the posthumous mystery that he took with him well protected after his death in 1980. An Enigma that was unraveled in the course of time. A pirouette worthy of his ability to match in films like his masterpiece Dizzinesswhere he posed the question of immortality or resurrection of his protagonist, Kim Novak.

Novak turned 90 a few weeks ago. But his longevity is not the only or the most impressive that crosses the 21st century among the stars of the temporarily so distant Hitchcockian universe. Vera Miles — the star falsely guilty and from Psychosis— is 93 years old. The same as Tippi Hedren, who was also his leading actress twice, in Birds and Marnie the thief. And Eva Marie Saint seems to ironically defy the title of the film in which she shared rough adventures with Cary Grant, with death on his heels: he is 98 years old.

This is how it is: Alfred Hitchcock, artistically known as the enemy of blondes, seems to have injected into them, as a posthumous offering or debt that was never negotiated, the gift of (semi)immortality that defies all the laws of probability. Those Anglo-Saxon or Nordic beauties, whom he clearly defined in his famous book of conversations with Truffaut as bearers of frozen sexuality, hibernating passion, now seem to inhabit a free greenhouse, a Cocoon that brings them closer to eternity. In a space that is full of almost magical sensationalism, the divas Eva Marie Saint, Vera Miles, Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak are not the only ones who can enjoy it.

Two other protagonists of Hitchcock’s films, Shirley McLaine and Julie Andrews, have already turned 88 years old. McLaine made his film debut in 1955 But who killed Harry?, a macabre comedy with a dead man more boring than Rascayú. And Julie Andrews starred in one of Hitchcock’s less fortunate films, torn curtain, with its rigid anti-communism at the heart of the Cold War. It is true that neither Shirley McLaine nor Julie Andrews quite fit the jealous sexual—almost racial—archetype that haunted the author. rear window. Both would be — rather — Hitchcock’s redheads. And—perhaps because of this, because of the directorial carelessness or disinterest that these works signify, since there is no libido motivation as a source of danger or fear of the unexpected or almost intangible—no one would name two films starring both actresses in his ten favorites from the teacher’s filmography .

white physicality

Neither Andrews nor McLaine – freckled, too predictable – resembled the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant carnal that Hitchcock had begun to hold his film hostage to since his silent films made in England. And that he would later develop with Madeleine Carroll and, already in Hollywood, with Joan Fontaine and Ingrid Bergman, until he reached the pinnacle of that perfection with Grace Kelly, whom he sculpted, imposed food and clothing regimes and idolized in The perfect crime, rear window and catch the thief. Grace’s betrayal, leaving him for the principality and Monegasque Basque Country, was never forgiven by her demiurge. I will not be the one to link that break with the fact that Gracia de Monaco lost her life at the age of 52 on the road, in a bad turn in Nice, so far from the golden pond for almost a hundred years. annual Eva Marie Saint.

We could see all of that now-legendary female gerontocracy—with the exception of Vera Miles, completely retired—at some point this century in public, always in honor, at various festivals. I remember the screening in particular Dizziness in Cannes 2013. The session was attended by Kim Novak and—despite being held on the last afternoon of the competition—how to give up seeing on screen the duplicity of the women the actress embodied (James Stewart sees her reappearing as Judy / Madeleine, among the dreamy and ghostly glow) knowing that just a few rows of seats away is a third person, the real Kim Novak. Exhaustion from eleven days of projections and a hazy and hypnotic atmosphere Dizziness, so auspicious, led to an involuntary sleep in Agnès Varda’s room completely. We never found out if Kim Novak stayed in the chair or levitated like her character. After the screening, with the lights on, we all woke up and enthusiastically applauded that 80-year-old woman, with the desire to prolong that moment and make her immortal. We were not aware that this thaumaturgy had already been created by the wizard of uncertainty, from his garden of pleasures.