Who doesn’t love a good thriller? Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movies are some of the best. But have you ever noticed how often jewelry features in his films? Hitch loved to spotlight unlikely items in unexpected ways to further the plot, reveal a character’s true nature, or simply surprise the audience. Often, what he used was jewelry. Since yesterday, August 13, was Hitchcock's birthday, here's a look at some of his movie jewels.
In Vertigo, a Spanish-style ruby drop pendant is essential to the plot and climax. The exquisite necklace appears several times in the movie: in a painting, around Kim Novak’s neck, and even in James Stewart’s fevered dream. But its reappearance around Novak’s neck is what convinces Stewart the ruby pendant is the unexpected clue to a murder.
Rear Window also uses jewelry as a vital clue. James Stewart and Grace Kelly suspect that a neighbor they spy on across the courtyard of Stewart’s apartment has murdered his wife. Their proof depends on finding the missing woman’s wedding ring. “A woman going anywhere but the hospital would always take makeup,perfume and jewelry…The last thing she would leave behind would be a wedding ring,” says Kelly, who impulsively breaks into the man’s apartment to find it – while Stewart watches through binoculars from his wheelchair.
In Lifeboat, Tallulah Bankhead is lost at sea after a U-boat sinks her ship. She surrenders her spectacular diamond bracelet as fish bait in a selfless act to help feed her fellow survivors.
Young heroine, Teresa Wright, is thrilled when her uncle, Joseph Cotton, gives her an emerald ring in Shadow of a Doubt. But when she holds the ring up to the light, she sees engraved initials inside the ring that match those of a victim of a wanted serial killer. She figures out the murderer is her uncle.
Cary Grant plays a smooth, rakish ex-jewel thief living on the Riviera in To Catch a Thief and is the suspect in a series of burglaries. Grace Kelly tries to tempt him with a splashy but fake diamond necklace in order to prove him guilty. But Grant, with an eye as practiced as a gemologist, admonishes Kelly saying, “You know as well as I do this is an imitation.”
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