There is no artform, no matter how imposing, that Hitchcock cannot turn to account as a mere prop or plot device. Nothing escapes capture or reiteration by cinema. The grandest concert can be brought to a halt by a Doris Day shriek. In North By Northwest , the film Hitchcock makes right after Vertigo , there is no escape for the film hidden in the statue. The O stands for nothing.
Cinema is nothing but the rot of time.
And yet cinema is everything, swallowing every other means of culture whole. What is remarkable about Hitchcock is that he saw cinema at one and the same time as immensely powerful and utterly insignificant. Like the MacGuffin, the cinema is an index of what it destroys.