"The thing I loved about Alfred Hitchcock is that he left a lot of open ends there, a lot of clues that didn't really add up the way you think they would, and sometimes, not at all"
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Hitchcock’s genius, Kim Novak suggests, wasn’t just suspense; it was the audacity to withhold closure. Coming from the star of Vertigo, this isn’t a casual fan note. It’s an actor describing the particular kind of unease Hitchcock manufactured: the feeling that the world onscreen has rules, but they’re not your rules, and they may not even be consistent. Those “open ends” and “clues that didn’t really add up” aren’t mistakes; they’re pressure points.
The intent here is almost defensive on Hitchcock’s behalf. Novak is pushing back against the tidy, solvable-mystery expectation audiences bring to thrillers, where every breadcrumb is supposed to lead to a satisfying reveal. Hitchcock weaponized misdirection and ambiguity to make the viewer complicit. You lean forward, you map patterns, you demand a key that will lock everything into place. Then he denies you the comfort of completion, and the denial becomes the point: anxiety doesn’t end neatly, obsession doesn’t resolve cleanly, desire doesn’t submit to logic.
There’s also subtext about performance. For an actress navigating Hitchcock’s famously controlling gaze, “clues” that don’t add up mirrors characters that can’t fully cohere because they’re being projected onto, manipulated, reinvented. Vertigo is essentially about a man trying to force narrative order onto a woman’s identity. Novak’s line reads as both admiration and a quiet acknowledgment of the cost: Hitchcock leaves gaps so the audience’s imagination - and appetite - can rush in and do the damage.
The intent here is almost defensive on Hitchcock’s behalf. Novak is pushing back against the tidy, solvable-mystery expectation audiences bring to thrillers, where every breadcrumb is supposed to lead to a satisfying reveal. Hitchcock weaponized misdirection and ambiguity to make the viewer complicit. You lean forward, you map patterns, you demand a key that will lock everything into place. Then he denies you the comfort of completion, and the denial becomes the point: anxiety doesn’t end neatly, obsession doesn’t resolve cleanly, desire doesn’t submit to logic.
There’s also subtext about performance. For an actress navigating Hitchcock’s famously controlling gaze, “clues” that don’t add up mirrors characters that can’t fully cohere because they’re being projected onto, manipulated, reinvented. Vertigo is essentially about a man trying to force narrative order onto a woman’s identity. Novak’s line reads as both admiration and a quiet acknowledgment of the cost: Hitchcock leaves gaps so the audience’s imagination - and appetite - can rush in and do the damage.
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