The Detective/Mystery Film
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The detective/mystery film has a number of different features which identify it while at the same time it consists of several different sub-genres representing variations in the basic generic structure. Many of the films of Alfred Hitchcock can be and have been identified as mysteries, though they are not usually mysteries in the sense of the "whodunit" or the strict detective film. Instead, they are films about crime, using the psychological underpinnings of crime as keys for delving into the realm of suspense. Mysteries use suspense as well as the viewer waits to see who committed the crime. The detective story is one of the staples of the Hollywood film, though in different periods the detective story has taken different forms according to public tastes. For much of the thirties and forties, the detective in the mold of Sherlock Holmes--the consulting detective, often a private individual rather than a police official, sometimes a gifted amateur rather than a professional--was common, with several different series characters exemplifying this genre. The detective film would later shift to the private eye while retaining the emphasis on discovery and the unraveling of a mystery. Alfred Hitchcock often stated that he did not direct mysteries as such but suspense films, and the difference between the two is vital in terms of the way he shapes his films. There is still an element of the detective or mystery story in his films. Hitchcock uses these elements in his lar
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knows the solution while the protagonist does not, and the viewer can then watch the protagonist slowly unravel what the viewer already knows. In this way, the protagonist moves toward his downfall as the viewer watches, helpless to change the situation.
The protagonist of Rear Window is a character who is not a detective but who acts as a detective. Indeed, he carries the matter so far as to become a peeping tom, in essence, watching the lives of his neighbors through the lenses of his camera and his binoculars. A traditional mystery is presented to him in one of the windows through which he peeps--a man apparently has killed his wife, and the "detective" has to uncover the crime and solve it from a distance.
A real detective shows up in Psycho but does not last long--he "solves" the crime by becoming a victim of the killer. The Arbogast sequence contains one of the more traditional depictions of the work of the detective as Arbogast goes from one hotel to the next in search of Marion Bates. He meets Norman Bates, becomes suspicious, leafs through the register, becomes even more suspicious, and finally enters the house in search of a solution, which he finds as he climbs the stairs and is attacked from above:
A knife sl
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1719
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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