It’s no secret that Alfred Hitchcock is my favourite director. I’ve never really been sure why this is, especially since his code of filmmaking contradicts mine on many accounts (he considered himself an entertainer rather than an artist, for one), but there you have it. He’s still my favourite director. The 39 Steps, from his earlier British period (which I prefer to his later, more well-known American period), remains one of my all-time favourite movies.
Recently I’ve been getting into the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, who, if not quite the polar opposite of Hitchcock, is pretty close. For some reason, though, while I do not see a lot of comparisons between the two directors, I see their names frequently appear in close proximity. It may be that each one popularized a certain genre of filmmaking: Hitchcock was the master of suspense, and Antonioni the master of alienation. It may be simply that they were two well-known directors producing their most famous work in the ’60s and ’70s. I really can’t say for sure.
This frequent association, though, has made me think about what the work of each director reveals about the other’s. Each is obviously coming from a different end of the spectrum: Hitchcock made entertaining, suspenseful movies geared to appeal to the general public, but done with a great degree of artistry and precision; while most Antonioni’s films were about the alienation of the individual in post-modern society, which made for alienating films (ironically?) and a fanbase among intellectuals, art students, and some critics.
There is one point at which the two intersect, however, because both directors made movies about photographers who inadvertently discover murders which have been committed: Hitchcock made Rear Window and Antonioni made Blowup. Both films, moreover, can be seen as metaphors for the power of film, and both also shed a great deal of light on each director’s work as a whole. (Warning: spoilers will inevitably follow.)
In Rear Window, a photographer (Jimmy Stewart) is confined to his apartment after breaking his leg. Bored out of his mind, he spends his days spying on his neighbours in the apartment block with his zoom lens. What starts out as casual voyeurism turns into a serious moral dilemma when, through his spying, he realizes that one his neighbours has murdered a woman.
As has been noted by numerous film scholars, Rear Window is very much emblematic of Hitchcock’s work. Hitchcock is a voyeur, after all, as are the audiences who adore his films: he makes films that examine the lives of others, and through the cinema screen the audiences spy on these characters for their own enjoyment. Film as a whole, indeed, is somewhat voyeuristic by nature; of course, on principle this represents no moral dilemma, as these are not real and unaware people into whose lives we are peering, but rather actors pretending to live the lives we see on the screen, and who are fully aware that they will be viewed by an audience.
Thus there is a direct connection between the photographer’s voyeuristic mode of entertaining himself and the voyeuristic nature of Hitchcock’s work. Similarly, there is a direct connection between the photographer’s inadvertent discovery of a murder, and another aspect of Hitchcock’s films: that of the moral and philosophical ideas underlying their escapist exterior. Hitchcock’s films are rife with material for discussion, after all; identity crises, moral dilemmas (such as the one I am now discussing), and social commentary abound in his work.
What Hitchcock seems to be telling us here is that what may start out as voyeurism for entertainment can lead to something far more significant – the discovery of a serious crime (and ultimately, the apprehension and arrest of said criminal) for Jimmy Stewart’s character, and the provocation of serious thought about moral and philosophical issues for us, the audience. It’s a hopeful view of the power of cinema.
The setup is similar in Antonioni’s film. Blowup is about a man photographer who appears to discover evidence of a murder while developing his film. Clearly the metaphor of Rear Window applies here; Antonioni was undoubtedly familiar with Hitchcock’s earlier film. And yet Antonioni is not simply parroting Hitchcock, because in the end of Blowup, the murder is not uncovered, justice is not served. The photographer’s claims of his discovery are meant only with apathy and disinterest, and ultimately he himself comes to question the truth of what his photographs reveal.
What Antonioni appears to be saying is that, in contrast to Hitchcock’s more optimistic view of cinema’s transformative power, people do not care about meaning in film, and those who do will come only to question, in the face of modern society’s overwhelming apathy, whether there actually is any meaning. In fact, it could very well be argued that Antonioni is questioning his role as filmmaker in a postmodern world. Will people see the meaning in his films? Will they care about the meaning? Is there any meaning, or is he simply deceiving himself?
What is more, it seems that Antonioni is not simply questioning meaning in film, but meaning in life as a whole. In addition to the film metaphor at work in Blowup is a recurring theme of sex without intimacy. The protagonist, as a professional photographer, photographs models. He asks them to reveal themselves, to degrade themselves, and he even crawls on top of them — yet all this is simply to get the best possible shot. He remains impersonal and purely professional in his interests.
There are also several scenes in which he has intercourse with a number of women, and each time, it is clear, the act means nothing particularly special to him. Here are people engaging in an inherently meaningful act – one with enormous emotional implications, if nothing else – and by going about it in such a casual, apathetic way, they have divorced it from its meaning.
Despite his public statements that modern man must abandon “outdated” morals just as he has abandoned outdated scientific principles, both in person and in his films Antonioni really suggests nothing with which man might replace these morals. Unwittingly, he shows through his work that when these morals are removed, there is only meaninglessness. Sex is meaningless, art is meaningless, life is meaningless.
The respective outlooks of Hitchcock and Antonioni thus stand in stark opposition. Hitchcock is optimistic, revealing a somewhat modernist attitude characteristic of his time (though starting to wane at that point), though more so in keeping with his Catholic faith. Antonioni, conversely, while often identified as a modernist director, belongs properly to the postmodern generation in his failure to replace “outdated” morals with anything even remotely workable. Rejecting the Christian morality that Hitchcock still upholds (though perhaps begrudgingly at times), he is forced to settle for a kind of existential uncertainty, an outlook which was very chic at the time (and to this day), but also stereotypically postmodern and unrewarding.
So far I’ve seen four films by Michelangelo Antonioni, and I don’t really feel the need to see anymore. I’ll continue to watch and rewatch the films of Alfred Hitchcock, however, for the foreseeable future.
