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The Architecture of Suspense

The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock
by Christine Madrid French
University of Virginia Press, September 2022

Paperback (also available in hardcover and ebook) | 6-3/4 x 7-3/4 inches | 274 pages | 66 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780813947679 | $29.50

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

The inimitable, haunting films of Alfred Hitchcock took place in settings, both exterior and interior, that deeply impacted our experiences of his most unforgettable works. From the enclosed spaces of Rope and Rear Window to the wide-open expanses of North by Northwest, the physical worlds inhabited by desperate characters are a crucial element in our perception of the Hitchcockian universe. As Christine Madrid French reveals in this original and indispensable book, Hitchcock’s relation to the built world was informed by an intense engagement with location and architectural form—in an era marked by modernism’s advance—fueled by some of the most creative midcentury designers in film.

Hitchcock saw elements of the built world not just as scenic devices but as interactive areas to frame narrative exchanges. In his films, building forms also serve a sentient purpose—to capture and convey feelings, sensations, and moments that generate an emotive response from the viewer. Visualizing the contemporary built landscape allowed the director to illuminate Americans’ everyday experiences as well as their own uncertain relationship with their environment and with each other.

French shares several untold stories, such as the real-life suicide outside the Hotel Empire in Vertigo (which foreshadowed uncannily that film’s tragic finale), and takes us to the actual buildings that served as the inspiration for Psycho’s infamous Bates Motel. Her analysis of North by Northwest uncovers the Frank Lloyd Wright underpinnings for Robert Boyle’s design of the modernist house from the film’s celebrated Mount Rushmore sequence and ingeniously establishes the Vandamm House as the prototype of the cinematic trope of the villain’s lair. She also shows how the widespread unemployment of the 1930s resulted in a surge of gifted architects transplanting their careers into the film industry. These practitioners created sets that drew from contemporary design schools of thought and referenced real structures, both modern and historic. The Architecture of Suspense is the first book to document how these great architectural minds found expression in Hitchcock’s films and how the director used their talents and his own unique vision to create an enduring and evocative cinematic world.

Christine Madrid French, a native of Los Angeles, is a historian, author, and screenwriter specializing in architecture, Hollywood, and film.

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REVIEW:

Like a lot of architects, my favorite Hitchcock film is Rear Window. While it lacks capital-A architecture, unlike other Hitchcock films and films by other directors that also appeal to architects, it is one of the few movies where the setting is as much a star as the actors; the spaces the characters inhabit are integral to the story, accentuated by the fact the setting doesn't change (outside of the changing sun and other environmental effects) from beginning to end. As such, the film has gained a good deal of attention from architects and architecture critics, with Jeffrey Kipnis and Juhani Pallasmaa analyzing it in essays, for example, and Steven Jacobs devoting a chapter to it in his book-length study of the architecture in Hitchcock films. In my review of that book I wrote: "It's as if architectural spaces are a member of the cast, and therefore Hitchcock's sets are worthy of their own 'monograph,' in this case focused on the domestic realm." 

But what about the non-residential architecture in Hitchcock's movies? Historian Christine Madrid French takes a broader look at the built world in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, discussing numerous films in three thematic chapters based on their settings: modernist houses, skyscrapers and apartments, mansions and motels. Prefacing those chapters is one that gives background on Hitchcock's experience in the United States, after making films in Great Britain in the 1920s and 30s, while a fifth chapter provides a fascinating look at the role of architects in Hollywood films in the middle of the 20th century. All told, The Architecture of Suspense is not a lengthy book, and for me it was a quick read, given my predilection for the overlapping subjects of architecture and film, but it is not a book short on facts, stories and insight.

Of the three thematic chapters mentioned above, the one devoted to modernist houses, "Villain's Lair," was given the most attention in the build-up to the book's release last month. The book treads on territory already explored in Benjamin Critton's 12-year-old zine, Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films, and architect Chad Oppenheim's Lair, focusing mainly on the Vandamm House in North By Northwest from 1959, but also looking at earlier precedents, such as Edgar G. Ulmer's 1934 film The Black Cat. I was not familiar with Ulmer's film, which stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but it appears to be the first movie to give its villain a modernist house (one perched on a hilltop above a cemetery, nevertheless) rather than a creaky old Victorian house or some other historical style. To French, it took 25 years for modernism to reenter the picture, starring in North By Northwest and then subsequently becoming a staple in films, from James Bond to Lethal Weapon.

"American Roadside," the chapter devoted to mansions and motels, provides a remarkable in-depth case study of Psycho, with the famous Bates Motel in the shadow of the Victorian mansion, but I really enjoyed the third chapter, "Urban Honeycombs," where Rear Window is found. It is not alone, though, given how Hitchcock set many of his American films — especially those after World War II — in cities. The others include Rope, set entirely in a New York City penthouse; Vertigo, with its numerous locations in and around San Francisco; North By Northwest, which starts in New York and heads to Chicago before climaxing at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota; and Psycho, with its often forgotten opening scenes in a Phoenix hotel. Although Rope, Rear Window, and Vertigo aren't studied in as much depth as North By Northwest and Psycho are in the other chapters, it is important to see how Hitchcock used cities generally and modern skyscrapers specifically as settings in films in the 1950s and 60s, especially given that the book is part of the publisher's Midcentury: Architecture, Landscape, Urbanism, and Design series (see also Environmental Design by Avigail Sachs).

Most illuminating, and also unexpected, is the book's fifth chapter, "Architects and the Art of Film," which delves into the role architects played in the production design of films in the middle of last century, both in Hitchcock's films but also a few by other directors. Most of the content in this chapter is new to me, from the names of architects involved in Hollywood films (e.g., Hal Pereira, brother of William) to the structure of art departments in Hollywood studios and the contribution of Robert Boyle, architect and production designer on Hitchcock's films. Going into the book, I thought I would learn a little bit (more) about the Vandamm House in North By Northwest, the fictional Greenwich Village in Rear Window, and other spaces in other films, but French's book provides much more: it reveals how Hitchcock and his designers devised the settings that made his films so memorable.

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