150 HOLLYWOOD AUTEUR
reminder of how close she has just come to being caught. The tension is finally broken momentarily in shot 12, a long, deep-focus shot of Alicia returning to her bedroom, presumably with key in hand. In the very next shot, without missing a beat, Sebastian strides out of the bathroom, making us fear that he might be aware of the theft. In the sequence just analyzed, Alicia is presented as extraordinarily brave in undertaking such a risky endeavor. She steals the key, as it were, from under her husband’s nose, and Hitchcock’s technique intensifies our awareness of her danger by putting us in her place. But our reaction to her physical danger is complicated and heightened by the morally ambiguous nature of the theft. It is one thing to steal a key from a villain for a good cause, but in this case the villain is also Alicia’s husband, a man who loves and trusts her. She is taking advantage of her intimate access to his personal possessions in order to rob him. On top of this, the man for whom she is stealing the key is not just an agent of the law, but the man she loves. Because of these emotional complications, Alicia’s theft of her husband’s key is not just an uncomplicated heroic action done for the good of her country. She is also cuckolding and symbolically castrating him. Through the combination of close-ups and subjective shots, Hitchcock situates the viewer inside the action, giving us first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to be someone who is so desperate to redeem herself, to win love and self-acceptance, that she is willing not just to put herself in grave danger, but also to become a traitor and a thief. The suspense generated is so great because so much is at stake if she is caught, not the least of which is having to face the man she has falsely loved and betrayed. Hitchcock’s systematic use of pointof-view or subjective shots implicates the viewer not just in suspenseful situations where one’s life is at risk, but in actions so dangerous and subversive that what is really at stake is one’s soul. If we allow ourselves to become engaged, pulled in by Hitchcock’s seductive techniques, we learn about dimensions of our psychic and moral life that surprise us and give us pause. Hitchcock summed up his motivation for making films in his interview with Truffaut: “My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audiences, and I consider that very important. I don’t care about the subject matter; I don’t care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the sound track and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream.”16 Elsewhere, Hitchcock has said, “I aim to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps