Paintings in Hitchcock's films are not simply part of the décor; they inform us about the characters who own them and/or those who look at them. On occasions, the paintings may simply be appropriate to the household in question. In STAGE FRIGHT, for example, Charlotte's house is full of portraits of herself (the narcissistic theatre star), whereas the house where Eve lives with her mother contains the sort of traditional bourgeois family portraiture often found in a well-to-do middle-class British household. However, Jonathan's flat contains modernist paintings, the connotations of which are more subtle (➢ Modern art). Similarly, the Vladimir Tretchikoff reproductions in Rusk's flat in Frenzy place him in a certain cultural context: in the 1960s, the prints were so popular in petty-bourgeois and working-class households that they were seen by the ‘educated classes’ as almost as naff as plaster flying ducks on the wall (‘Tretchikoff prints are as lowbrow as art gets’: Lesley Gillilan 2000: 15). In placing them behind Rusk when he is acting most ostentatiously as a false friend to Blaney, Hitchcock is clearly getting in a dig at him for his taste in art. The large sentimental dog and puppy picture in Marnie's mother's house conveys a similar irony about her tastes. In all these examples, one senses Hitchcock's sensitivity to the connotations of the different paintings/reproductions. A proper consideration of Hitchcock and art would entail detailed discussion, but a few key points may be made. For convenience, I will divide the paintings into portraits, other representational art and modern art and, since portraits have played a significant role in films generally, begin by looking at their traditional associations.

PORTRAITS

A painted portrait given visual prominence in a film is typically used to signify one of a limited number of ideas:

• 1. the power of a patriarchal (more rarely, matriarchal) figure, e.g. the dead father as Great White Hunter in THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (Robert Siodmak, 1945); the fathers who founded industrial empires in Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (Fritz Lang, 1956);

• 2. the power of family tradition, e.g. the gallery of military ancestors in The FOUR FEATHERS (Zoltan Korda, 1939);