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• 1 2019-05-05T17:26:31-07:00 VII. So Little Control 5 plain 2019-05-13T10:23:22-07:00 On June 20, 2007, the American Film Institute released an updated list of the 100 greatest American movies ever made. Four of those films were directed by Alfred Hitchcock: 9. Vertigo (1958), 14. Psycho (1960), 48. Rear Window (1954), and 55. North By Northwest (1959). This seven year period is widely considered to be not only the best of Hitchcock’s career, but perhaps the greatest of any filmmaker in history.
   

  In his essay, “Hitchcock, Metteur-en-scene: 1954-60,” Joe McElhaney places this period in context. (It is important to note that McElhaney himself notes that by presenting Hitchcock as a “metteur-en-scene” he is not attempting to diminish his auteur status.) As previously discussed in this book, during this period Hitchcock used his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-62), as a vehicle of self-promotion. This was especially advantageous, McElhaney argues, because the show came at a time when the classical Hollywood studio system was in decline. McElhaney writes:

  The decline created a space within which Hitchcock was given an increasing degree of autonomy over his films and over his own image, controlling both production and exhibition of these films on a scale rarely granted him upon his arrival in Hollywood a decade earlier (McElhaney 2011). 
   

  The films that Hitchcock made during this period are not only considered his best, but are often cited as the Hitchcock films, those which most embody the auteur’s sensibility. It was this period that Robin Wood set out to examine when he wrote his seminal study, Hitchcock’s Films. Truffaut called Rear Window and Notorious (1946) his two favorite Hitchcock pictures, and, in his 1954 review of the former, called it “one of the most important of all the seventeen Hitchcock has made in Hollywood. … In Rear Window I think it is Hitchcock who is expressing himself through his character" (Truffaut, 1994).
  
  When Ernest Lehman began work on the script for North By Northwest, he aimed to write “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures” (McGee, et al.). Vertigo is perhaps Hitchcock’s most personal film, full of his own preoccupations and fetishes, as the interviewees of Hitchcock/Truffaut rightly observed. And in the case of Psycho, it was with this film that Hitchcock altered the course of film history by banning moviegoers from entering the theater after the movie began and killing off his star in perhaps the most highly-regarded scene of his career, one that is the subject of a documentary of its own. All of this is to say that this period is probably the most often examined by those attempting to understand Hitchcock’s status as an auteur. However, the important caveat here, as McElhaney observes, is that during this period, Hitchcock had more artistic and commercial freedom than ever before. Not only was he a producer on all of his films, but he was one of the country’s most reliable and beloved attractions. People flocked to theaters to see what the “Master of Suspense” would do next, in part because during this period he could do whatever he wanted. Would a producer like Selznick have approved the murder of Janet Leigh’s character in Psycho? Probably not.
  
  And so, where does Rebecca fit in? Earlier in this book, I outlined the threats to Hitchcock’s authorship that defined the production of Rebecca, including Selznick’s demanding that the film closely follow du Maurier’s novel in order to meet the expectations of the film going public. However, it it is important to take a step back and examine where Hitchcock was in his career outside the production of Rebecca. Because this was his first American film, it was also the litmus test for whether he could not only succeed in Hollywood, but be a viable partner to studio executives and a willing participant in the way the studio system operated. If he could not pass this test, then his career in the small town of Hollywood would be over. Furthermore, going back to England at this time meant going back to Europe just as World War II was beginning. These external factors, as Leff outlines, contributed to Hitchcock’s unwillingness to truly challenge Selznick’s authority; doing so might jeopardize not only his career, but the safety of his entire family. And so, Hitchcock played along to get along, which most likely attributed to his feeling that Rebecca was not a “Hitchcock” picture.
  
  However, remember Wollen, who noted that one of the functions of the auteur theory is to discern value and authorship where none had been before. It was the auteur critics, primarily those at Cahiers du Cinema, who developed and applied the theory to the films of classical Hollywood. In other words, they applied it to films that were made in conditions that preached homogeneity, were heavily censored, and under the eyes of studio executives who often cared more about pleasing audiences than the artistic visions of the directors. It was by adhering to the rules of the system that auteurs were able to leave their mark and distinguish themselves from other directors. Thus, if we are to understand Hitchcock as an auteur, and if we disagree with him that Rebecca is, in fact, a "Hitchcock picture," it is most advantageous to turn to the year of his career during which he had the least amount of control, 1940, to understand his true skill as an auteur. While the forces both inside and outside of the production of Rebecca may have attributed to his view of the film, the gift of hindsight shows us that the film is, in fact, a "Hitchcock picture." The rest of this book will seek to understand one key moment that is Hitchcockian, and will shed further light on why he felt the way he did about Rebecca.