Warning: May contain partial spoilers!!!
"Consider Her Ways" begins bang in a nightmare state, with no warning or explanation beforehand: A woman (Barbara Barrie) awakens in a hospital maternity ward to find herself in a dystopian society she doesn't recognize. It's a quasi-totalitarian state in which an educated class of doctors and police oppress an illiterate class of servants and women whose sole function is to be "mothers"--to crank out babies that are taken away from them immediately and which the "mothers" never see. Though the "mothers" are to some extent coddled and pampered, they are also oppressed by being grotesquely overfed and kept under sedation. Adding to the strangeness of the society, all the members of both classes--oppressors and oppressed--appear to be women. There are no men anywhere. Our protagonist's attempts to convince others that she is not a "mother" but Dr. Jane Waterleigh, a physician herself with a husband but no children, are met with shock or disbelief--until she is taken to see Laura (Gladys Cooper), an elderly historian. Laura remembers her grandmother telling her about a society, long ago, that contained men.
Things are not as they appear to be in this Hitchcock episode, but what makes it more bizarre than most--and peculiarly memorable--is that the explanations don't even begin until 40 minutes in. For the first 40 minutes, the viewer is just dumped into an alternate reality, without preamble, and left to find his own way. The grotesquerie of the alternate reality brings "Consider Her Ways" closer in tone to one of the farther-out "Twilight Zone" episodes than to most of the Hitchcock series, but it's quite gripping, contains a neat (if unnecessary) extra twist at the end, and is very well acted by Barrie and Cooper, playing the only two characters who really matter.
"Consider Her Ways" begins bang in a nightmare state, with no warning or explanation beforehand: A woman (Barbara Barrie) awakens in a hospital maternity ward to find herself in a dystopian society she doesn't recognize. It's a quasi-totalitarian state in which an educated class of doctors and police oppress an illiterate class of servants and women whose sole function is to be "mothers"--to crank out babies that are taken away from them immediately and which the "mothers" never see. Though the "mothers" are to some extent coddled and pampered, they are also oppressed by being grotesquely overfed and kept under sedation. Adding to the strangeness of the society, all the members of both classes--oppressors and oppressed--appear to be women. There are no men anywhere. Our protagonist's attempts to convince others that she is not a "mother" but Dr. Jane Waterleigh, a physician herself with a husband but no children, are met with shock or disbelief--until she is taken to see Laura (Gladys Cooper), an elderly historian. Laura remembers her grandmother telling her about a society, long ago, that contained men.
Things are not as they appear to be in this Hitchcock episode, but what makes it more bizarre than most--and peculiarly memorable--is that the explanations don't even begin until 40 minutes in. For the first 40 minutes, the viewer is just dumped into an alternate reality, without preamble, and left to find his own way. The grotesquerie of the alternate reality brings "Consider Her Ways" closer in tone to one of the farther-out "Twilight Zone" episodes than to most of the Hitchcock series, but it's quite gripping, contains a neat (if unnecessary) extra twist at the end, and is very well acted by Barrie and Cooper, playing the only two characters who really matter.