This book examines Alfred Hitchcock's work through his recurring motifs. Motifs in general are a neglected area of Film Studies. Although the decade by decade multi-volume American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States (see Munden 1997; Krafsur 1997; Hanson 1988, 1993 & 1999) includes a ‘Subject Index’ for each decade, and several film guides have either a ‘Category Index’ or a ‘General Subject Index’ – all of which include motifs – these are no more than listings of the films in which a specific feature occurs. Actual discussions of motifs in the cinema are rare, and there is only one publication in this area which I have found useful to this project and would like to acknowledge at the outset: Michel Cieutat's two-volume Les grands thèmes du cinéma américain (1988 & 1991). Despite the title, Cieutat includes motifs as well as themes, and he looks at the ways in which recurring elements in Hollywood films reveal (sometimes hidden) aspects of the culture which produced them. Nevertheless – to anticipate one of my arguments – whenever Cieutat's categories overlap with those in Hitchcock's films, there is a clash: Hitchcock's motifs do not fit the general pattern: see, for example, Milk in Part I and STAIR-CASES in Part II.

I have had a substantive interest in motifs in the cinema for many years. This book arose out of my research. Although it is confined to Hitchcock's films, it is also informed by an awareness of the functioning of motifs in films generally. In cases where one of the Hitchcock motifs has resonances with examples elsewhere, I discuss the similarities and differences. My response to the not unreasonable question: ‘why another book on Hitchcock?’ would be that (a) this aspect of his films has been surprisingly ignored and (b) approaching Hitchcock's films from the point of view of his recurring motifs offers a different slant on his work, one which I hope will reveal new insights.