Hitchcock e a arquitectura

Abstract

How does architecture contribute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock? And how do the spaces that he designs and films help in creating the atmospheres that made his movies famous? This paper proposes a reflection on cinema's architecture, basing itself on Hitchcock's filmography. Gaston Bachelard, in La Poétique de l'Espace , said that the most precious benefaction of the house is that it accommodates dreaming, protects the dreamer, and allows us to dream in peace. However, this safety of the house and the home was something that Hitchcock enjoyed to subvert. To really get in touch with the viewers most primitive emotions, like fear itself, he thought it would be more effective to invert what we would usually consider a safe place. It is said that Hitchcock liked to play the public's emotions like the keys of an organ, but what is interesting is to try to understand how the filmmaker used filmed space and lighting in order to indeed manipulate the human psyque. How did Hitchcock influence the perception of space and of certain architectural elements as well as their symbolic meanings? The bathroom, the tub, and the shower curtain, were never the same after Psycho , nor motels as frightening. Church towers have never been as vertiginous as in Vertigo , or the windows as indiscreet as in Rear Window .