Take a look at this thread on another board, regarding Hitch and Menstruation: π¨
http://imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/132891/hitchcock-menstruation?page=1
I know you are well-read on Hitch.
What are your thoughts? π±
Good heavens, gubbio...
....long time no hear, but...such a topic!
Having a little fun with me?
Also: I do realize that there are some other boards that are keeping up on Hitchcock, but I'm not sure I should wander too far off of this safe harbor, smallish though it may be. Also, I am becoming more convinced in my later years that my Hitchcock fandom/expertise is rather narrowcast: Psycho, NXNW, Vertigo, Rear Window, Strangers on a Train...Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot. I can't always join in on a conversation about Number Seventeen or Sabotage. Let alone Rebecca(which I saw once, on the big screen at the Motion Picture Academy in LA, in 1977. And that's the only time I saw the whole thing.)
For here, on the menstruation thing. I got my copy of Hitchcock/Truffaut when I was a pre-teen, and I recall finding some of it quite opening in matters of sex. Hitchcock -- evidently out to show Truffaut that he had some sexual ideas -- said a few things that raised my pre-teen eyebrows(one was the idea of shooting a scene of man and a woman, a room apart, masturbating to each other as a means of sexual congress.) I mean, sometimes in that book, Hitchcock comes across as either sexually obsessed...or a "dirty old man."(Which is a phrase I resolutely reject as I age, myself -- one can at least reminsince about youthful sexual days and older WOMEN are quite sexual these days -- there are no dirty old women either, we're all enjoying staying romantic past the biological clock. As long as everybody's age peers.)
But back to the menstruation thing. Here's Hitchcock being intimate and revealing his own lack of knowledge at a particular time in his life and in the early 20th Century. As commenters on that other page attest, in the early 20th Century, sexual matters may well have been more greatly kept "under wraps" on a "need to know" basis, and considered not proper for discussion. The actress in question may have been quite embarrassed to have to tell Hitchcock why she couldn't go in the water, he may not even have known about the cycles of his own wife, Alma(was he married to her when this incident occurred?)
In a Hollywood known then, and now(despite "me too") as sexually uninhibited, Hitchcock remains an anomaly. He seems to have claimed celibacy for at least the last 30 years of his life. We all know that he had sex at least once with Alma ...Pat is the lookalike result. But that seems to be about it. So many other Hollywood directors(including, and perhaps especially, rather plain men) had all sorts of wives, mistresses, hookers, etc. But not Hitchcock. And with all that wealth and fame and power, clearly he COULD have (he was fairly slim in his fifties. Well, not slim, but OK.)
I've always found a bit suspect the critical claims that the celibate Hitchcock expressed his sexuality through his films. The suggestion of premarital sex in Notorious; the erotic kissing scenes over four decades; eventually, the rape scenes of Marnie and Frenzy and -- says I -- the suggestion that "sex has just been had" at the beginning of Psycho and that sex is BEING had(under the covers) at the beginning of Torn Curtain(though Newman emerges from bed in his boxer shorts. Hmm.) I don't see these scenes as Hitchcock expressing his sexuality when he didn't have sex; I just see him as a director of sexy/sexual pictures. I mean, both Marnie and Frenzy are ABOUT sex, as a subject. Marnie can't have it; Rusk can't stop himself from forcing it.
I found this quote from Hitchcock on sex to be quite telling: "Sex is for kids, sex is for the movies." One can see his point: ironically(and dangerously) sex is never a stronger drive than in very young people(who may not have the money or careers to properly handle babies that might result); whereas once one is older and more prosperous and established...sexual drive declines. But not entirely. So that's "sex is for kids."
As for "sex is for the movies." Well, Paul Vanderhoen (sp?) said pretty much the same thing about his film "Basic Instinct." He said that people were substituting the pursuit of sex in real life("doing") for watching it on the screen("watching.") Which is also the premise of porno, of course, but sneaking sex in to movies that can be seen on date night...is box office. Sometimes. Fifty Shades.
One reason that North by Northwest is such a treat is that single adventurer Cary Grant meets single adventuress Eva Marie Saint and we are there when the flirting first takes place and the sexual sparks fly...yet turn into love and marriage. Still, it is a sexier journey than , say Man Who Knew Too Much(where Jimmy and Doris are married with child) or even Torn Curtain(where Paul and Julie are fiancΓ©e and rather settled.)
So North by Northwest may be my favorite example of "sex is for the movies." NOT Marnie and Frenzy, with their non-consent rapes.
So...Hitchcock may have started out unknowledgeable about menstruation and other matters of sex, but he learned. And his movies reflected WHAT he learned. Sex is for kids; sex is for the movies.
Good heavens, gubbio...
....long time no hear, but...such a topic!
Having a little fun with me?
You are welcome, Gubbio.
"Y'all come back now, y'hear?"