Gender Roles

The lack of definition in gender roles is central to a major body of Hitchcock’s oevre. Hitchcock usually incorporated the aforementioned theme to the mother-son relationships as seen in: Psycho, North By Northwest, Strangers on a Train, and as well as in Notorious. But, it is in Notorious that this Hitchcock-narrative-staple of undefined gender roles are to appear twice. To elaborate, what I mean to suggest is that the same character traits are overtly …

…as she knows the fate of its inhabitants. The final shot of the film is that of Alex in close-up, awaiting what is suspected to be his certain doom (by means of Hitchcock’s delicate placing of him in the frame and the expressionistic low-lighting of his face). As Devlin drives Alicia to what is suspected to be a hospital, Alicia is now free. And freedom in Hitchcockian terms is the freedom from being viewed.