During a career that exceeded five decades, Alfred Hitchcock’s name became synonymous with the thriller genre and white-knuckled tension. However, his films are not only comprised of typical thriller elements, they are also brimming with themes of perverse sexuality. In fact, in his article entitled “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” cinema author Robin Wood claims that “the key to Hitchcock’s films is less suspense than sexuality (or, alternatively, that his ‘suspense’ always carries a sexual charge […])” (535). This assertion may at first seem surprising—his nickname was “The Master of Suspense” after all—but these themes often underlie the entire conflict of his films. An auterist analysis of Hitchcock’s filmography reveals a strong fixation on perverse sexuality.
