Hitchcock's Five Basic Plot Formations by Robin Wood

Hitchcock's Five Basic Plot Formations

 from Robin Wood, Hitchcock's Films Revisited

1. the falsely accused man

2. the guilty woman
3. the psychopath
4. espionage & political intrigue
5. marriage

from http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/plots.html
 

 Hitchcock Themes & Motifs

Basic list of themes and motifs

Motif list from Hitchcock's Motifs by Michael Walker
A basic list of recurring elements:
"absurdist geography"
"banality of evil"
betrayal
birds
blank stare
blondes
Catholic iconography
decorum, social order
disguise
doubling, Doppelgangers, twins
evil erupts in ordinary surroundings
exchange of guilt
eyes
falling, dangling
fantasy vs. reality, illusion
the family
fetishism
film and reality, film as metaphor
food, eating
the "gaze"
guilt
handcuffs, restraint, bondage
homosexuality
imagination
logic vs. intuition
love
loyalty
making someone over
masculinity
maturity
mirrors
mothers, "Momism," Oedipal conflict
obsession
passion
police, authority figures
religious notions: guilt, repression, suffering, redemption
secrets
sex and death
shadows
suffering and its value
suspicion
travel, movement through space
trust
windows, curtains
women, femininity
voyeurism, "scopophilia"

Michael Walker's list of motifs

Hitchcock's Motifs, by Michael Walker (Univ. of Amsterdam Press, 2005) provides extended discussion, from a psychoanalytical perspective, of recurring elements in Hitchcock's films. Below is a condensed version of Walker's list of "key motifs":

Bed Scene
- couples and beds
- beds and the police
Blondes and brunettes
- Blondes versus brunettes
- blond iconography
Cameo appearances
Children
Confined spaces
- bathrooms and washrooms
- confinement and concealment
- cages and bars: fears of imprisonment
The corpse
Dogs and cats
Doubles
Entry through a window
Exhibitionism / voyeurism / the look
Food and meals
- food and marriage
- food and sex
- food and murder
- food and guilt
- chickens and eggs
Guilt and confession
- Catholic overtones
- transference of guilt
- guilt, confession, and the police
Handcuffs and bondage
Hands
- male hands / female hands
- held wrists
- damaged hands
- holding hands
Heights and falling
Homosexuality
- gay undercurrents
- homosexuality, espionage, and the look
Jewelry
- greed and status
- female desire
- female beauty / male power
Keys and handbags
Lights
The MacGuffin
Mothers and houses
Portraits, paintings and painters
- modern art
Public disturbances
Spectacles
Staircases
Trains and boats / planes and buses
Water and rain

 From http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/themes.html