There’s no question that Alfred Hitchcock has gone down in film history as one of the most notable master of suspense, he managed to bring to the screen some of the most notable and classic films ever made in Hollywood. Part of what makes his films so compelling are, of course, the characters, men and women who often find themselves caught up in events they barely understand and control.
Looking at them through the lens of the zodiac helps not only shed light on what makes them tick, but also helps the viewer see which one of them they would identify with the most.
Aries - Jeff
Jeff is the main character of Rear Window. A renowned photographer, he is now wheelchair-bound because of an accident and occupies himself by spying on his neighbors. Like all Aries, Jeff is stubborn and more than a bit hot-headed at times, and he has a fiery spirit of adventure that makes his being stuck in a wheelchair all the more frustrating for him. His ram nature also leads him to make impulsive decisions that don’t always work out so well.
Taurus - Midge
A minor character from the Vertigo, Midge is the loyal and level-headed friend of the main character Scottie. She is definitely the most practical character in this film, the one who provides Scottie with an alternative to the obsessive love that he has for the mysterious woman Madeleine. She shows herself to be loyal to Scottie, and definitely the voice of logic that he should listen to (in that sense, she is also very much a mother figure to him).
Gemini - Bruno Antony
Hitchcock excelled at bringing characters to life, including men who are more than a little deranged. That is certainly the case with Bruno Anthony, one of the titular characters in Strangers on a Train. He’s a sinister and unstable sort of character, one who builds fantasies out of thin air. Like many Gemini, it’s always hard to tell what is going on beneath the surface; all one knows is that it is inherently combustible.
Cancer - Norman Bates
Of all of Hitchcock’s characters, Norman Bates is arguably the most Psycho, he embodies all of the negative qualities of the Cancer. He is prone to bouts of self-indulgence and, ultimately, he’s a slave to his darkest emotions.
Ultimately, of course, this leads him to murder his mother and, tortured by guilt, split his very personality so that part of her remains inside of him, pushing him to murder every time he desires a woman.
Leo - Brandon Shaw
Rope is one of Hitchcock's more chilling films. It focuses on two men (who the narrative implies are gay) who have murdered their classmate. Brandon Shaw is by far the more dominant of the two of them, often pulling his companion along. He has the sort of personality that pulls everyone along for the road, for good or ill. What’s more, he has an absolutely unassailable sense of his own rightness, even when he’s doing evil.
Virgo - Mr. De Winter
Mr. de Winter is one of the main characters in Rebecca. A rather cold man, he has a very specific and precise way in which he expects his wife (who in the film is never named) to behave. Like all Virgos, his exterior suggests that he is a man of logic without feeling, but the reality is that there is a strong wellspring of feeling, one that always lurks just beneath the surface, just waiting to erupt.
Libra - Mrs. de Winter
Mrs. de Winter, one of the other main characters in Rebecca is a young and rather impressionable young woman. She desires little else except to please her husband, and she is often very submissive to all of his wishes.
This doesn’t always work out to her advantage, however, particularly since she struggles throughout the film to understand how she fits in her husband’s sprawling mansion and, of course, how she compares to his dead wife Rebecca.
Scorpio - Mrs. Danvers
In Mr. de Winter’s vast mansion, one person stands out from anyone else, and that is one Mrs. Danvers. A close friend of the deceased Rebecca, she still clings to the other woman’s memory, to such an extent that she is determined to make the new Mrs. de Winter’s life absolutely miserable. Like any Scorpio, she is truly an obsessive, and she seems to take a genuine delight in tormenting her new mistress.
Sagittarius - Mark Rutland
Played by Sean Connery, Mark Rutland is one of the two main characters in Marnie, and the man who ultimately figures out that Marnie has repressed traumatic incidents from her youth. Despite the fact that he ultimately helps her to recover those repressed memories, his Sagittarius traits means that his methods to do so-while perhaps coming from a genuine desire to help the woman that he loves-are definitely not always above board.
Capricorn - Roger Thornhill
piece of Hollywood filmmaking. Starring the inimitable Cary Grant as a man who gets caught up in all sorts of spy and espionage shenanigans, it’s an exciting film from the beginning to the end.
The film’s main character, Roger Thornhill, is a devilishly handsome character and, throughout, he’s also a very sensible and practical one and, naturally, he gets the girl by the end of the film.
