What’s the
McGuffin?
Motivating
Heros in
Hitchcock’s Films

By: Katherine Evans 

For the next few weeks at Film Forum on Houston Street, we New Yorkers have the immense treat of being able to see the entirety of director Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography on the big screen.

If your familiarity with Hitch begins and ends with Psycho, this is definitely the time to get better acquainted. You probably know he’s the master of those tangly, twisty psychological thrillers, but I think you’ll also find a lot of his movies romantic and sly and really quite funny.

Anyway, if you decide to check out a movie like North by Northwest or The 39 Steps or Notorious, one of the plot gimmicks to look out for is the “McGuffin.”

Basically, a McGuffin (which, of course, isn’t a device that Hitchcock invented, but he is credited with naming it) is the single object that motivates both the hero and villain… and thus sort of drives the movie’s entire plot.

The McGuffin– the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings movies, the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones, or, as we see in some of Hitchcock’s movies, the government secrets on microfilm or uranium ore stored in wine bottles– is whatever both the good guys and the bad guys want more than anything else. Put another way: not to have the McGuffin would mean dire consequences for both parties.

And, as Hitch explains in his awesomely droll and very British way in this video, while the McGuffin may be the single thing on which the characters are betting the farm, it’s often something that, on its own terms, the audience probably wouldn’t care very much about at all. (I mean, really, a Maltese Falcon?)

So why is the McGuffin so effective in the movies we love? Why do we buy it?

As audience members, we want to be involved in a story in which the stakes are incredibly high and so the motivation of the hero is incredibly straightforward.

We want to believe that there’s an object out there that guarantees unspeakable joy in its possession or absolute catastrophe in its loss. We want to believe that there’s something out there that’s worth scheming, sacrificing, fighting, and outrunning boulders for.

If you’re a Christian, you actually do believe that, of course. The Apostle Paul wrote that nothing else mattered to him except knowing Jesus and His power and purpose and forgiveness. Jesus himself actually used a McGuffin in at least a couple of parables– the merchant in pursuit of the pearl, the man in pursuit of the treasure in the field– to illustrate the reckless abandon with which we should respond to God’s grace, giving up everything, stopping at nothing, because of the immense and ultimate joy it promises for us.

So, if you head down to Film Forum to see Hitchcock at work, look for the McGuffins– the incriminating rope, the apartment key. Gasp, laugh, try to spot the Hitchcock cameo… and be thankful that, in Christ, the stakes are so much higher, and the promise of joy is so much greater, than any McGuffin the Master of Suspense could dream up.

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