Since I was a little girl, The Film Noir genre’s always had a special place in my heart for the certain rawness and drama there is to it. It almost makes me wonder if this is the way people actually saw their relationships and the world around them – in black and white, no colours, no nuances.

I grew up watching Hitchcock’s movies, trying to make some sense out of the aftertaste I was left with, every single time, with every ending. Sadness, unsettling emotions, the nearness of death, madness, torment and struggle, fury. Unease. It was all inexplicably new to me.

And I soon started to look for the same feeling myself, for the power it had over me.

There were moments I’d leave the pink ribbons, the butterflies and dresses, the fluffy kittens and the pretty poneys aside and unconsciously embrace the futility of my and my loved ones’ existence. I didn’t know how to call it then, but it made me understand that suffering was as necessary as life itself. That pain was going to stay with me long after the smiles have vanished and the puppies have grown up.

At three years old, I lost my favourite stuffed bear-dog and felt it for the first time. At five I had to throw away the empty box I was keeping the bird my grandmother had given me as a present in until, one morning (it always happened in the morning) I’d find it stiff, cold, eyes open, dead in an unusual position. Then, at seven, my parents took me to my first funeral. An unspeakable pain has slowly settled in, as heavy as lead, keeping me from breathing, knowing, feeling that nothing I’d ever do could stop everything and everyone I love from disappearing from my life…

The moment I saw the house on the hill from Psycho (no, not the bathroom scene), I understood that some people are different in the sense that they feed on this soul shaking darkness and do it for different reasons.

When most hide away from pain and tristesse, they seek it. They thrive on it, let themselves be consumed by it as a way of feeling alive. Some are just mentally ill. Some use pain to distract themselves from a bigger, deeper pain. And some, the luckiest ones, can turn their traumas into something as beautiful as a work of art.

Later on in life, I started to feel the need of experiencing some unsettling emotions of my own. Those were the ones that helped me create my own world, my own dramas, rules and freedoms that only I could let myself have. And to this day, there is a part of me that no one else is allowed more than 300 feet closer to. Most of the time I run away from that side too, because of what I might find there: the endless void, a pain so great, that it might choke me to death.

What I love most about Hitchcock’s psychological thrillers, is that they stay with me long time after they’re over. The fear is alive. The shadows, the noises, the creatures and all the scenarios I find myself in the middle of are real, not only projections of my mind. A cold hand grabs my right leg in my sleep, from under the bed. A shapeless presence follows me on the darkest corridor in the middle of the night, a faceless man’s ghost comes rapidly towards me, paralysingly. The uncertainity, the tension, the fear will either kill me or make me go insane.

Not only does he show the etiquette, the struggles, the personal torments and social behaviours of he’s time in something as nuanceless as black and white, but also brings us closer to human nature, in all it’s splendor. He reveals what others are afraid to say. He brings up the truth from under the masks, unveiling the darkest thoughts, the sins, the best hidden mistakes. Anyone, everyone is a suspect. Special effects and SGI techniques not having been invented yet, he finds other ways to hypnotize his audience: by deconstructing the mind of his characters into small pieces. By making us think. Involving us in the story. Giving us numerous chances to assume we know how the movie should end, who the guilty person really is and what will happen next, yet constantly change our minds and get it wrong almost every time, as the movie carries on, only to find the revelatory ending, nothing at all like we would expected it to be.

I discovered “Alfred Hitchcock presents” series on the Romanian National Television (TVR2), in my early twenties and rediscovered it almost ten years later, as I visited a Dali/Duchamp exhibition in London where there was a projection of  a “Spellbound” fragment, Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck)’s dream that reminded me of Hitchcock/Dali’s fructuous collaboration. Then, I remembered how my ex and I used to salute each other using Hitchcock’s famous “Good evening” line and ended up asking myself why I never had the curiosity to actually listen to the  „Funeral march of a marionette” by Charles Gounod and understand its connection to the series.

From there to rewatching every episode only to find out there are so many I’ve missed the first time, was only a step.

I remain a great admiror of „Hitchcock presents” for it’s apparent simplicity, that will almost always distract the viewer, only to eventually reveal a perfectly hidden truth, more shocking and dramatic than imagined. Also, for the 267 ways it detects and feeds my darkness in.

Good night

&

Green Eyed Kisses.