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The pleasure of this vivid, concise book comes as much from its exquisite evocation of the films as from its shrewd distillation of their psychology. Agnel's account of a Hitchcock film that one saw years ago may be even more enjoyable than a fresh viewing. In his description, images linger to be contemplated and savoured.
Agnel searches for the psychology of the director's work in the films themselves, mostly avoiding reference to Hitchcock's personal biography. Early on, he cautions us to distinguish the canny, ‘spontaneous’ psychodynamics depicted in the films from the unflattering depictions of psychoanalysis offered in some of the scripts (p. 7). Recollecting the self-important, unhelpful psychiatrists depicted in Vertigo and Psycho, and the unconvincing cases of repressed memory elaborated in Spellbound and Marnie, Agnel assures us that Hitchcock's mockery of psychoanalysis is not a sign that the auteur director is himself unpsychological.
The psychological problem that most fascinated Hitchcock, Agnel proposes, begins with the under-examined symptom of boredom, a state of mind that Agnel ties to the innocent psychology of childhood. As charming as a child, the typical Hitchcock protagonist avoids serious adult responsibilities, fidgets under the watch of parental figures, and ducks the problem of evil—both in others and within. Disengaged and a bit asleep in life, the character has an attitude of blasé amusement that may be summed up as, ‘Is this all there is?’
Unconscious boredom, von Franz tells us, is a frequent precursor to individuation (Jung et al. 1964, pp. 166-67). Hitchcock's cure for this condition, Agnel demonstrates, is to entrap the character in a life-threatening plot in which he or she not only appears to be morally compromised, but actually becomes so through making the difficult choices necessary to survive in a predatory world. Chance supplies an attractive helper of the opposite sex—one who, it turns out, has already integrated more of an oppo