Misogynistic Moments From Movie Classics That'll Make You Cringe Today

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as one of the all-time greats when it comes to classic movies. He also has some serious mommy issues, especially if one takes Psycho, arguably his most well-known film, into account. As Bidisha put it for The Guardian, Hitch's female characters are loosely divided into "the vamp, the tramp, the snitch, the witch, the slink, the double-crosser and, best of all, the demon mommy" each of whom gets punished in the end (some more than others). Rampant misogyny exists in each of these otherwise classic films, from the aforementioned Psycho to The Birds and everything in between.

There's Marnie, in which Hitch employs "full-on misogyny, rampant woman-blaming and outright abuser apologism" to tell the story of a woman irrevocably damaged by her own mother, a prostitute and fellow psychopath. The Birds seeks to teach us a lesson about how women's inability to get along or find interests outside of pulling men(!) will eventually lead to pecked death by the titular creatures. 

Elsewhere, both Pscyho and Vertigo feature duplicitous women out to screw men out of their fortunes, the premise of the latter even predicated on using the titular affliction against a (male) sufferer. Norman Bates is often taken as a character-insert for Hitch himself. Whether you agree with that analysis or not, there's no denying he's got some pretty bizarre ideas about women, and the poor, misguided menfolk they entangle in their web of deceit.