Hitchcock Presents: The MacGuffin
- Episode aired Sep 22, 2016
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Pretend you know what it means
If Alfred Hitchcock claims that all his film-plots revolve round a catalyst he calls the Macguffin, then I suppose it must mean something. But this short, rather rushed mini-documentary will not leave you any the wiser, the contradictions standing out more strongly than anything else.
We take one obvious example, the stolen money in Psycho - something that is front-of-mind with the characters, while the audience has forgotten all about it at the climax, as the blood spatters around the shower-cubicle. Ditto, The 39 Steps, a title that signifies nothing whatever to the audience. Yet another one mentioned, The Maltese Falcon, relates directly to an object that stays at the centre of the action throughout. And, different again, the repeated name Rosebud from Citizen Kane, whose significance comes clear at the end.
So it has no meaning, but it has a function, we're told - to which we automatically nod, hoping we look profound. As for the term itself, it can apparently be traced back to a story of two men in a railway carriage.
"What's in that bag?" - "A MacGuffin." - "What's a MacGuffin?" - "It's for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." - "But there aren't any lions in the Highlands." - "Ah, then it's not a MacGuffin."
That used to be called a Shaggy Dog story, essentially pointless. I can only think that it sounds a little like the novelist Joseph Conrad's rule: give each character a major crisis at the beginning of his career that will influence his beliefs and actions for life. But don't reveal what the crisis was.
We take one obvious example, the stolen money in Psycho - something that is front-of-mind with the characters, while the audience has forgotten all about it at the climax, as the blood spatters around the shower-cubicle. Ditto, The 39 Steps, a title that signifies nothing whatever to the audience. Yet another one mentioned, The Maltese Falcon, relates directly to an object that stays at the centre of the action throughout. And, different again, the repeated name Rosebud from Citizen Kane, whose significance comes clear at the end.
So it has no meaning, but it has a function, we're told - to which we automatically nod, hoping we look profound. As for the term itself, it can apparently be traced back to a story of two men in a railway carriage.
"What's in that bag?" - "A MacGuffin." - "What's a MacGuffin?" - "It's for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." - "But there aren't any lions in the Highlands." - "Ah, then it's not a MacGuffin."
That used to be called a Shaggy Dog story, essentially pointless. I can only think that it sounds a little like the novelist Joseph Conrad's rule: give each character a major crisis at the beginning of his career that will influence his beliefs and actions for life. But don't reveal what the crisis was.
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