Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite movie character of all time: “Neither Hollywood nor TV has shown any interest”
Alfred Hitchcock‘s favourite movie character of all time made his first on-screen appearance in 1925, and he would reappear periodically until 1976. So, for 51 long years, Hitch watched this screen icon light up the screen, but he couldn’t understand why other cinephiles were so much less interested in the character than he was. Didn’t they see what he saw? Didn’t they recognise greatness when it was right in front of their faces?
In case you couldn’t guess by this hyperbolic, winking introduction, Hitchcock’s favourite movie character was someone very close to his heart: himself. After all, the ‘Master of Suspense’ became known throughout his five decades as a director for cameoing in every one of his movies, from his debut feature film, 1925’s The Pleasure Garden, to his final effort, 1976’s Family Plot.
Over time, fans in the know got a kick out of waiting for him to turn up, often as “a face in the crowd, a passer-by, a bystander around whom action swirls in which he is not in the least involved.” These cameos were rarely built into anything more substantial, aside from when he appeared twice in films like The Lodger, Rope, and Suspicion. However, Hitch did comically allude to a desire for more screentime on many occasions, and he loved waxing lyrical about his own screen prowess, even if few others in the industry paid him much attention.
“Neither Hollywood nor TV has shown any interest in my favourite character, although he has appeared in every one of my films,” the iconic director opined in the hilariously-titled essay ‘My Favourite Film Character Is—ME!’ “You are probably familiar with him—a fussy, flustered, bewildered man; short and obese. He used to be fatter. He is always played by myself, and has become, in a manner of speaking, my film signature.”
Hitchcock was fastidious and immovable with the nature of his cameos, which helped them become one of the best running gags in cinema. Unlike modern directors such as M Night Shyamalan, whose cameos have a nasty habit of involving him too heavily in the plot by making him an incongruously important character, Hitchcock’s cameos were always incidental to the film’s story. Hitchcock didn’t want to be part of the film in any real way; he simply wanted to make himself and the more perceptive members of his audience laugh.
“He appears so briefly on the screen as almost to be subliminal, which means you are not always sure you have seen him,” Hitch wrote about his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it screen presence. Even better, his characters were always completely oblivious to the sinister events transpiring around them. “He is never even aware that, at the moment of his intrusion, foul murder is being plotted,” Hitchcock smiled, “that the gentleman he passes on the street is on his way to strangle his wife, that the house he stares at contains a corpse.”
With this in mind, fans can’t help thinking about Hitchcock’s most memorable cameos, which are all defined by how prosaic they are. In North by Northwest, Cary Grant’s protagonist goes on the run from plane-flying villains who believe he’s a secret agent, but while that’s happening, Hitchcock is simply shown missing his bus.
In Frenzy, he is among a group of people applauding a rousing speech. Well, all except Hitchcock, who refuses to clap. Or how about The Birds, where he can be spotted leaving a pet store with two dogs on leashes – his own pet Sealyham terriers – not long before the world’s birds attack humanity. These all brought a knowing smile to the face of any Hitchcock fan, and intensely amused the man himself, too. No wonder he was his own biggest fan!
