Editing Alfred Hitchcock (section)

===Representation of women===
<!--add White, Susan (2015). "Alfred Hitchcock and Feminist Film Theory (Yet Again)". In Freedman, Jonathan. The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 109–126. And Modleski, Tania (2016) [1988]. The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock And Feminist Theory. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.-->Hitchcock's portrayal of women has been the subject of much scholarly debate. [[Bidisha]] wrote in ''The Guardian'' in 2010: "There's the vamp, the tramp, the snitch, the witch, the slink, the double-crosser and, best of all, the demon mommy. Don't worry, they all get punished in the end."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Bidisha |author-link1=Bidisha |title=What's wrong with Hitchcock's women |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/alfred-hitchcock-women-psycho-the-birds-bidisha |work=The Guardian |date=21 October 2010|access-date=26 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171227061912/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/alfred-hitchcock-women-psycho-the-birds-bidisha|archive-date=27 December 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> In a widely cited essay in 1975, [[Laura Mulvey]] introduced the idea of the [[male gaze]]; the view of the spectator in Hitchcock's films, she argued, is that of the heterosexual male protagonist.{{sfn|Mulvey|1989}} "The female characters in his films reflected the same qualities over and over again", [[Roger Ebert]] wrote in 1996: "They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerised the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated."<ref>{{cite web |first=Roger |last=Ebert |url=http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-vertigo-1958 |title=Vertigo |date=13 October 1996 |work=Chicago Sun-Times|access-date=26 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171223043656/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-vertigo-1958|archive-date=23 December 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|In 1967, Hitchcock told Truffaut: "I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel that the English women, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she'll probably pull a man's pants open.&nbsp;... [W]ithout the element of ''surprise'' the scenes become meaningless. There's no possibility to ''discover'' sex.{{sfn|Truffaut|1983|p=224}}}}

[[File:Vertigo 1958 trailer embrace.jpg|thumb|left|[[Kim Novak]] and [[James Stewart]] in ''[[Vertigo (film)|Vertigo]]'' (1958)]]

Hitchcock's films often feature characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers, such as Norman Bates in ''Psycho''. In ''North by Northwest'', Roger Thornhill ([[Cary Grant]]) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him. In ''The Birds'', the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself from a clinging mother ([[Jessica Tandy]]). The killer in ''Frenzy'' has a loathing of women but idolises his mother. The villain Bruno in ''Strangers on a Train'' hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by [[Marion Lorne]]). Sebastian ([[Claude Rains]]) in ''Notorious'' has a clearly conflicting relationship with his mother, who is (rightly) suspicious of his new bride, Alicia Huberman ([[Ingrid Bergman]]).<ref>{{harvnb|Kaganski|1997|pp=1–9}}</ref><!--replace source-->