Besides perhaps Psycho... did most of his movies revolve around wealthy people or it's just that people in general used to dress that way 'back then'? Very different from the jeans and t-shirts you see around everywhere nowadays. Thanks in advance.
shareThat's a good question because...most of the time, his leads WERE well off, and some times, flat out wealthy.
And yet, he made a number of films where the leading characters were "working stiffs"
Psycho (secretary, motel manager, hardware store owner...private eye?)
Frenzy (the anti-hero is actually homeless at one point)
Family Plot(the heroes are a cab driver and his "psychic" girlfriend who lives poor)
Saboteur (Bob Cummings is an airplane factory assembly line worker)
Shadow of a Doubt(the father is a bank teller -- not the boss -- who can afford a house for his family but they are not well off)
The Wrong Man(Henry Fonda is a Stork Club band musician, but his family struggles financially)
The feeling in Psycho and Frenzy is that these people with their hardscrabble lives sort of "laid themselves open" for their journies into terror. In The Wrong Man, Fonda's financial desperation drives the plot.
And yet:
Any number of characters are well off:
Cary Grant in North by Northwest(Madison Avenue is high paying; I'm guessing he has family money)
James Stewart in Vertigo(A "retired" cop with no dependents, he spends the whole movie with time on his hands and money in his pocket)
Laurence Olvier in Rebecca (He owns a mansion called Manderley; I can't remember where he gets the dough)
Sean Connery in Marnie(His father is still alive, and the family owns a company and lives in a mansion)
Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train(he's a psycho villain, but his father is rich and HE lives in a mansion)
Paul Newman in Torn Curtain (He's a rocket scientist; government pay is good)
Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (lives in a villa on the French Riviera, evidently paid for by his jewel robberies before he went straight)
James Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much (A medical doctor)
CONT
...I could go on, but it does seem that Hitchcock liked most of his protagonists to be either high earners or independently wealthy. The women in these decades were generally wives or "husband hunting" -- though Tippi Hedren in The Birds is a "wealthy heiress" whose father owns a newspaper.
I suppose as with a lot of movie characters in the movies of the 30s through the 50's, audiences either looked up to these well to do characters or could identify with them if THEY had good jobs. Successful careers were as much a part of the fantasy of movies as any other part of it.
Hitchcock liked to wear suits and ties, so he liked his male characters to wear them, too. He had designers like Edith Head dress the ladies well, too.
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And yet, for all of the glamour of the characters in most Hitchcock movies, his biggest hit was about "the little people": Psycho. John Gavin is saddled with debt and alimony; Anthony Perkins' motel is called a "worthless business"(maybe he has some money from his dead father); Janet Leigh has worked hard for TEN YEARS as a secretary and her sister works in a "music store" (records or instruments, they never say.) No "idle rich" in THIS movie. And the young women are unmarried and WORK. I suppose Martin Balsam's private eye makes good money, but I don't think that's a high earning job.
Also, late in the film, on "church Sunday," John Gavin finally puts on a coat and tie in the Hitchcock tradition.