Here's Looking At You, Guards

No doubt you're thinking, "You don't need to tell us what the curtain eyes mean. Constance tells us. Move on to a different symbol."

But just hold on a minute. It's true that Constance at the end of the film explains that the eyes on the curtains symbolize "the guards at Green Manors." Ballantyne's dream is a kind of code telling Constance that Dr. Murchison is the evil, mad-scientist villain. The eyeball curtains are there to help her see that the bad guy is in a place with guards (that is, Green Manors).

So everything is explained. Except—those eyes seems awfully weird and eerie to just mean "guards," don't they? Who are these guards, anyway—and why are they represented by these big, staring eyes?

It seems like you could read those eyes in another way. Maybe they represent guards—but they also seem like they represent those peeping, staring, snooping analysts who are the focus of the movie.

Constance and other analysts are always peeking, prying, snooping, and looking for clues and signs. One of Constance's colleagues, for example, says of her,

"Did you notice her blush every time we mentioned [Edwardes'] name?"

Those analysts see everything; their eyes are wide, staring, and creepy. They peer right through you into your heart and brain; they see who you love and what you dream about.

Here's Looking At You, Looker

So these eyes could be referring to the guards. They're also referring to the super-looking power of the analysts. But they're also referring to a third entity… the person who looks with the analysts.

That's right: it's you.

The whole film is analysts uncovering secrets as you watch. You see that Edwardes' signature proves he's not Edwardes. You see right through Ballantyne's skull into his dream. And you look into Constance's head to see the doors opening there. At one point, Brulov declares:

BRULOV: Look at you. Dr. Petersen, the promising psychoanalyst, is now all of a sudden a schoolgirl in love with an actor, nothing else.

With this clever mention of an actor—especially because the movie stars the swoonworthy Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman—Brulov is essentially grabbing you by the eyeballs and telling that you can see Constance more clearly than she sees herself.

Those creepy eye curtains, then, symbolize the viewer observing all the characters onscreen. And they also suggest that while you're looking, the film is looking back. It knows you're there. Everything it shows you as a "secret" is something that you are, in fact, meant to see.

When Ballantyne muses, "It's like looking into a mirror and seeing nothing but the mirror," he's talking about his lack of memory… but he could also be talking about those eye curtains, which look out at you and see you looking back.

If that sounds creepy—well, welcome to the wild world of Hitchcock films.