Edgar Allan Poe's Influence on Alfred Hitchcock's Films

Introduction: Two Masters of Fear

Several authors have explored the aesthetic relationship between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock, particularly writers like Dennis Perry and Donald Spoto, among others. Although Poe has had a major influence on many artists — with Hitchcock demonstrating many of Poe's influences and gaining worldwide recognition for it — few have truly attempted to understand Poe. The only one who seems to have tried, and who lived a life similar to Poe's, is Alfred Hitchcock. As men and as artists, they share several similarities, both professionally and personally.

Ever since his youthful submersion into Poe's work, Hitchcock consciously or unconsciously continued using Poe as a source for new ideas. One may argue that Poe's main legacy to Hitchcock is the masterful generation of emotional reactions in audiences. The key to that legacy is the notion of surrealism and the concurrent experience — as Perry so aptly phrases it — of delight and terror, which becomes the symbol and trademark of both their narrative styles. Their ability to simultaneously mesmerize and shock is fused together in such a way that becomes more than the sum of its parts. As Hitchcock identified from reading Poe: "fear . . . is a feeling that people like to feel when they are certain of being in safety" (Perry 190).

Looking back at the lives of both creative madmen, they shared the same obsessive, grim outlook on life that they carried into their work — Hitchcock with his obsession over actress and Psycho lead Tippi Hedren, and Poe with his obsession with the fear of beautiful women dying. It is no wonder Hitchcock's work is so intricately connected to Poe's. Films like Vertigo and Psycho, and works like "The Raven" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," and Eureka: A Prose Poem, reveal just how consumed by darkness both Hitchcock and Poe were. In that darkness lies a profound connection, and in that connection lie masterpieces.

Hitchcock's Early Life and His Discovery of Poe

Insanity is, after all, a result of many things — usually fear and obsession being the foremost. Hitchcock's constant fear drove him into directing, just as Poe's constant fears drove him to write. Death, something they both obsessed over and wove throughout their works, always had a way of not only taunting them, but also luring them.

As a teenager, Alfred Hitchcock fervently read Poe and declared: "without wanting to seem immodest, I can't help but compare what I try to put in my films with what Poe put in his stories: a perfectly unbelievable story recounted to readers with such a hallucinatory logic that one has the impression that this same story can happen to you tomorrow" (Schroeder 200). He was an overweight boy, rejected from regular military service and dealing with his father's death at the age of fifteen. It was through the creative expression of directing that he was finally able to showcase not only his talent, but also provide an outlet for his obsessions, desires, and inner life. In many of his films, his perspective is clear and recurring.

Death, Obsession, and Beautiful Women

Vertigo plays with the theme of death in a particularly striking way. Hitchcock masterfully creates both a fear of and an attraction to death. Like Poe, Hitchcock used the perception of death as both fuel for his creative work and a vehicle for his obsessions. Scottie, the protagonist, becomes obsessed with a woman named Madeleine/Judy who pretends to be preoccupied with dying. Acrophobia — the fear that prevents him from saving "Madeleine" — and which lifts only when Judy dies — symbolizes much of what Hitchcock represents as an artist. He is a man who transforms simple things into momentous ones. The act of staring down from a ledge becomes, in his hands, the very act of life and death itself.

Poe and Hitchcock were, in some form or another, obsessed with beautiful women. Hitchcock's now-infamous unrequited fixation on Tippi Hedren is a prime example. He treated Hedren terribly. In The Birds, Hitchcock tormented her after she failed to respond to his sexual advances. One well-documented instance was his substitution of real birds for mechanical ones during filming. He had her perform scene after scene with the birds until she was covered in bites, scratches, and bird droppings — all while he continued to pursue his exacting and unrelenting vision.

To better understand how Poe could have influenced Hitchcock so deeply, it is important to examine what drove Poe's most famous obsession. Poe's preoccupation with death stems from a series of tragic personal losses. Every woman he loved seemed to die — his mother, his wife, his foster mother, his aunt, and even a woman he once fell in love with. Like Hitchcock, his most celebrated works showcase this obsession with great power. One of his literary works most directly shaped by this fear was the ever-famous "The Raven." One line from the poem that captures this anguish reads: "Sorrow for the lost Lenore — the rare and radiant maiden…" (Poe 4).