Jordan Peele Reinvents the Hitchcock Heroine, with the Help of Janelle MonƔe
The scene: A private investigator is standing in a clock tower taking photographs of a parade. She is a woman, played by Janelle MonƔe, and she is searching for clues to a murder. As the detective stares through the lens, she begins to realize that one of the bystanders on the ground looks exactly like her. Then she sees another identical face. And another. Suddenly, the sea of potential suspects are visions of herself. Are these women good? Are they evil? And why are these twinlike alter egos haunting her?
āI wanted to create a Hitchcock moment that doesnāt really exist in a Hitchcock film,ā explained Jordan Peele, the 39-year-old writer and director of Get Out, which has been widely acclaimed as one of the best movies of 2017. Peele, who was standing on the fourth floor of the abandoned Palace movie theater in downtown Los Angeles, had constructed a scenario that paid homage to the mystery and intrigue of Hitchcock masterpieces like Vertigo and Psycho. Just as Get Out is Peeleās subverted and original take on unsettling classics like Rosemaryās Baby and The Stepford Wives, āNoir Townā replaces Hitchcockās uniformly white protagonists with a woman of color.
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