Arguably the most important recent development in film theory/criticism
has been the radical opening up of discussion of stars: the construction
of the star image/persona, the intricate interrelationship of acting/pres-
ence/image, the ways in which a star functions, and the complex of
meanings she or he generates, within a given filmic text. I draw here
upon the pioneer work of Richard Dyer ( Stars, Heavenly Bodies) and,
especially, Andrew Britton in his brilliant Katharine Hepburn: The
Thirties and After (to my mind among the finest books on the Holly-
wood cinema so far produced), in examining the interaction between the
Hitchcock thematic and the Ingrid Bergman thematic in the films they
made together (particularly Notorious and Under Capricorn, which are
among both Hitchcock's and Bergman's highest achievements).

This chapter also has a secondary ambition (and the two will interre-
late): to challenge the continuing hegemony of a certain psychoanalytical
approach to Hitchcock that, deriving from the theories of Lacan, can be
exemplified at its most influential by the work of Laura Mulvey and
Raymond Bellour. This will not, of course, constitute an attack on the
use of psychoanalytical theory to analyze films in principle; it will rather
register a sense that the particular approach, in its tendency to exclusiv-
ity and its claims to the definitive and comprehensive, has proven con-
stricting and reductive, obliterating or marginalizing considerations that
are in fact of the first importance in determining a film's meaning. I
begin by summarizing an intelligent and distinguished (it deserves to be
far more widely known and should certainly be anthologized) but ulti-
mately inadequate article by Michael Renov on Notorious that situates

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