Political Intrigue in Alfred Hitchcock's Movies

The master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock developed the boilerplate for political intrigue in his career of thrillers. Hitchcock was more a master of form and high concepts of evil, greed, and seduction that never got tangled in political details. Most of the politics in Hitchcock's films are a "MacGuffin," that ever-present plot device to keep a story moving. Hitchcock believed audiences didn't care what "it" was, just as long as the movie was a thrill ride. The "it" could be the crime, the loot or the secret; it was simply the MacGuffin that gave the story gravity to spin around.

Only one exception arises in Hitchcock's 1944 propaganda foray "Lifeboat." In this brilliant wartime scenario a Nazi officer is saved by British civilians aboard a lifeboat and Hitchcock's MacGuffin is clearly a named political enemy. Hitchcock's first successful political thriller came before "Lifeboat" with his 1934 "The Man Who Knew Too Much." The archetype of the sinister foreigner was defined on screen by Austrian actor Peter Lorre, who took his first English speaking role in Hitchcock's film. Lorre plays a political assassin who kidnaps the daughter of British tourists in Switzerland.

The British tourists stumble into this plot of political intrigue between French spies, Lorre's thick accent, and ambassador's from unnamed European countries. Political motives and who's working for who is quite the MacGuffin. It became Hitchcock's only remake with a 1956 version. The spies are still French, but with American tourists in Morocco. It established a theme Hitchcock made standard in thrillers: average people in over their heads in extraordinarily dangerous circumstances. This became the basis of his other prevalent theme: the wrong man or mistaken identity.

After the successful original "The Man Who Knew Too Much," Hitchcock made 3 films in a row dabbling in political intrigue. His landmark British film, "The 39 Steps," then "Secret Agent," and "Sabotage." "The 39 Steps" involves international spy plots, as does the secret WWI missions of "Secret Agent." "Sabotage" was based on Joseph Conrad's novel "The Secret Agent," involving a terrorist plot in London. Hitchcock adapted Conrad's highly politicized novel into a vague MacGuffin of political intrigue.

By avoiding nameable international enemies and keeping his intrigue free of political theory, Hitchcock insured his global success. The career smart director instead focused his attack on the ubiquitous international enemy of the 1930s and 1940s: the Nazis. This came successfully in Hitchcock's 2nd Hollywood film, "The Foreign Correspondent," that pits an American reporter into a plot of political intrigue set against Hitler's rise.

Political intrigue ensued in Hitchcock's American films with "Saboteur," "Notorious," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," and "North by Northwest," but his MacGuffin got a bit meatier in 1966s "Torn Curtain." The political intrigue involves Paul Newman as an American rocket scientist believed to be a communist defector, who is actually a spy infiltrating the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. In 1969 Hitchcock followed "Torn Curtain" with more Cold War political intrigue in "Topaz" with Spies, Cuban missiles and Commies.

"Topaz" was Hitchcock's last political thriller and with it the director spelled out the film's politics more clearly than ever before in his career. Though, for Hitchcock it was always about the theatrics of violence and the spies, secret agents, and politics where merely the MacGuffin to get there. This was quite symbolic in several films that climaxed violently in an actual theater.

In both the original and remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much," an attempted assassination is foiled in London's Royal Albert Hall. Another assassination takes place in both the opening and ending sequence of "The 39 Steps," notably at the London Palladium. In "Saboteur" there is a shootout in a movie theater where the character's bullets synchronize with gunfire onscreen. Then in "Torn Curtain" a fire is set ablaze in a theater as a diversion for the heroes to make their climatic escape.

In 35 years, Hitchcock's 12 political thrillers laid the expectation that suspense comes before politics.