ABSTRACT
Filmmakers in all genres have incorporated stairs into their films to confer different feelings and emotions, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock. The author establishes a useful typology for identifying and interpreting the architectural space created by staircases in Hitchcock's films. She distinguishes up to four different types of this seemingly meaningless everyday element: the enclosed staircase, the platform staircase, the linear staircase and the open staircase. The first category, 'the enclosed staircase', will be exemplified with the films Blackmail and Vertigo. The second category is 'the platform staircase', which appears in films such as Rebecca or Suspicion. The third category addresses 'the linear staircase': simple and single-stranded, it is present both in the Newton's house in Shadow of a Doubt and in the interior of the Bates mansion, where Detective Arbogast would meet his death in Psycho. The fourth category is 'the open staircase', which appears in the films such as Rebecca and Psycho.
