Harry's Place Arts

A guest post by de Bentvueghels

A User’s Guide

R

The R punctuates and recalls the facticity of the graphematic band: the burning yet unscorchable monogram of Rebecca, the pin [tie-pin] of the strangler-rapist Rusk in Frenzy, the master spy “R” (as in rhododendron) in Secret Agent, the boy Arnie in The Trouble with Harry (and hence, with cross-links, “Marnie”), in each case differently, a law of repetition. (1)

<I>In Secret Agent, the British spymaster who sends the bumbling agents out to eliminate the unknown secret agent is named “R.” It is a letter allied to repetition, which recurs in isolation elsewhere in Hitchcock: the monograms of Rebecca or the tiepin of Frenzy’s Rust. “R” later loses confidence in his secret agents’ acting skills, ordering war planes to bomb the whole cinematic train en route to Constantinople bearing Marvin, who must be stopped from arriving or the outcome of the world war and the empire will be retroactively altered. “Old man ‘R,’” as Robert Young’s Marvin wearily calls him, closes out the implications of secret agent Marvin’s reaching Constantinople – that is, to disclose the deanthropomorphizing status of cinematic consciousness, its dependence on a deauratic marking system. (2)</I>

Notes

1. Tom Cohen, Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies. Volume One: Secret Agents. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis and London, 2005, p. 102.

2. Ibid. p. 108.