The Difference Between Hitchcock and Davis

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The sexuality portrayed in the two movies are very different. In the first movie there is no mention to sex or making love. There is no indication that Margot was sleeping with either the man she was cheating on her husband with or her husband himself. There are no nude scenes, and sex has no part in the movie whatsoever. On the other hand, The Perfect Murder's first scene opens up with Emily and the Painter having sex in his apartment. This was showed multiple times throughout the movie. Sex was in many conversations between Emily and the Painter, and also the Painter and David. This shows the steady decline of the old belief that sex should not be talked about publicly or filmed on TV. The reason it is so freely shown in The Perfect Murder was because during the time period it was filmed, sex and promiscuity was not looked down upon. It was something that most people participated in openly. Prior to this, and in the 50s sex was a much more private act.

Lastly, the action in the films were drastically different. In Hitchcock's movie the entire movie centered on dialogue, there was almost never a moment where someone was not speaking. In Davis's film there was much more action, scenery, and silence. This is mostly because of the advancement in side effects and filming equipment. During the 50s there was not a need for action in films, there was mostly implied action or very minimal action. In the 80s and 90s there begins to be a great shift in this need, people become drawn to action and violence on TV. Both the dialogue and the action are equally important in the 90s, where in the 50s dialogue was the most important piece of a film.

All of these differences show how the culture has changed from the 50s to the 90s. There is a change in morals, beliefs and what people want to see and allow themselves to see in visual movies and representations. The 50s had much cleaner movies with little promiscuity, bad language, or violence in it. They focused mostly on dialogue in order to create the knowledge of these things rather than visually portraying them on screen. In the 90s, movies did not hold back they showed everything visually there is sex, violence, and bad language in the movie. This shows how the culture changed in America from a very high moral society to a looser moral society.