WATER

Hitchcock seems to have had a fascination with water, particularly the sea. Almost half his films include a coastal setting and/or a sea voyage: ➢ BOATS for a discussion of the latter. At the same time, water – especially the sea – is most often a source of threat. There are various inflections of the motif.

• 1. Suicides and suicide attempts in water.Most of the Hitchcock characters who try to drown themselves are women; his men prefer more violent deaths. Men also occur in this motif more often as murderers. The female suicide/ male murderer distinction is present from Hitchcock's first film. Rejected by the dissolute Levet, the native woman in THE PLEASURE GARDEN walks into the sea, evidently to commit suicide. Levet follows her; she assumes he has changed his mind and joyfully reaches out to him; he drowns her. The scene is extremely powerful, and one of many features in the film which demonstrate Hitchcock's early mastery of the medium. Attempted suicides in which a woman is rescued from drowning then occur in THE MANXMAN (Kate from the harbour) and MARNIE (Marnie from the ship's swimming-pool). Although there is only one definite female suicide by drowning in Hitchcock (Mrs Higley follows her dead child into the ocean in LIFEBOAT), when Chloë is pulled from the Hillcrists’ garden pond at the end of THE SKIN GAME, she may well still die and we are told that her unborn child has been killed. In Vertigo, there is another variation: Judy as ‘Madeleine’ fakes a suicide attempt in San Francisco Bay so that Scottie will rescue her. By contrast, there are no attempted male suicides by drowning in Hitchcock and just one successful one: Fisher in Foreign Correspondent (➢ GUILT AND CONFESSION).

• 2. Murders, murder attempts and bodies disposed of in water. THE PLEASURE GARDEN has been mentioned. IN YOUNG AND INNOCENT, Christine Clay's body is washed up on the beach; in JAMAICA INN, sailors who survive the wrecks are murdered as they try to reach the shore. Rebecca's body was sunk by Maxim in her boat at sea; in LIFEBOAT, Willi pushes Gus into the sea to drown and is himself brutally forced into the sea when the other survivors take revenge. In REAR WINDOW, Thorwald disposes of his wife's body offscreen in the East River; in FRENZY, Rusk's first murder victim is seen floating naked in the Thames.