Hitchcock - Film Terms and Definitions

Question 1

acrophobia, n.

Answer 1

fear of being in high places

Question 2

vertigo, n.

Answer 2

A disordered condition in which the person affected has a sensation of whirling

Question 3

male gaze

Answer 3

‘a concept developed by feminist film scholar Laura Mulvey…It refers to the notion that women are always displayed as objects for men’s gaze rather than as independent entities whose value is distinct from how they are viewed by men.’
Gabriele Griffin, A Dictionary of Gender Studies

Question 4

fetish, n.

Answer 4

1. An inanimate object to which a pathological sexual attachment is formed, or by extension a person who is the object of an obsessive fixation.
2. An object, the possession of which is believed to procure the services of a spirit lodged within it.

Question 5

uncanny (unheimlich) - Freud

Answer 5

‘That which is unfamiliar–or more literally, un-homely–in the familiar or unhomely. In a famous essay, ‘Das Unheimliche’ 1919, Freud argued that the uncanny is the feeling we get when an experience that occurred by chance suddenly feels fateful and unescapable.’
Ian Buchanan

Question 6

uncanny - literature

Answer 6

Able to create the feeling of ‘unheimlich’ by ‘evoking situations in which a character acts without reason, or, more particularly, returns when they are thought to be gone–the archetype of this is the ghost or the zombie.’
Ian Buchanan

Question 7

auteur theory

Answer 7

• When film critics began to look at film through the literary prism of authorship, late 1940s.
• Celebrated the film director as an auteur–an artist whose personality or personal creative vision could be read, thematically and stylistically, across their body of work.

Question 8

auteur-structuralism

Answer 8

figures such as ‘Hitchcock’ are merely names ascribed to the recurrent structures appearing in the films of these directors - allows for unconscious and unintended meanings in films to be identified and decoded

Question 9

Dolly shot - what is it? What does is represent in Vertigo?

Answer 9

• The camera moves backwards but the zoom moves forwards.
• a depiction of desire
• interrupted the spectators absorption in the world of the film

Question 10

mise-en-scene - what is it? what is its purpose?

Answer 10

• The visual representation of the scene, props, clothing and the set. Also includes visual effects like lighting and iconography aspects.
• gives visual information about the world of a film’s narrative. Can be full of hidden information as an ironic commentary on the characters and their world.

Question 11

What does Robin Woods think it is?

Answer 11

‘a perfect organism’