Hitchcock and Wolfe
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Towards the end of V.R.T, a new prisoner--a middle-aged fat man--is brought into the prison wing housing Marsch/VRT, and Michael Andre-Driussi has suggested this figure represents author Gene Wolfe inserting himself metafictionally (and self-deprecatingly) into his very own novel. FIFTH HEAD is after all replete with wolves of one sort or another. But this cameo by Wolfe also reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock, who used to insert himself similarly into all of his motion pictures. I maintain FHofC draws from several of the British filmmaker's movies, the same way it does from THE THREE FACES OF EVE and THE WIZARD OF OZ.
The first and most obvious one of these is PSYCHO, arguably the most famous movie of Wolfe's generation to incorporate the notion of multiple personality disorder as its crucial plot point (although THREE FACES OF EVE runs a close second). From the wheelchair-bound Jeannine, who's always reminded me of the invalided Mrs. Bates up in her spooky old house (Mrs. Bates is also dead, of course, just like the real Jeannine), to the schizoid figure of Victor Trenchard, who becomes Dr. Marsch (Marsch is Anthony Perkins as far as I'm concerned), to the greedy Marion Crane, whose embezzlement recalls the cupidity of Jeannine and Phaedria; all seem in part possibly derived from PSYCHO.
Another Hitchcock movie involving secret identities is VERTIGO. In it, Kim Novak portrays Judy, who is actually Madeleine, a woman Jimmy Stewart believes has committed suicide by jumping from a tower. Stewart subsequently attempts to remake Judy into Madeleine. Now recall that besides being the name of one of Gene Wolfe's daughters, St. Madeleine's is where Victor Trenchard's parents have been married, and as I state elsewhere each of them has an alternate identity like the Kim Novak character.
Then there are the numerous mention of birds throughout FIFTH HEAD, from gannets to larks to shrikes to ravens to orioles. Birds as agents of chaos are used over and over and over again in Hitchcock films, from YOUNG AND INNOCENT to SABOTEUR to MARNIE to TOPAZ to PSYCHO to the aviphobic masterpiece, THE BIRDS, a movie which still causes me to hurry past playgrounds where more than a few birds congregate.
Finally I'd like to mention STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, the one movie of Hitchcock's I feel best sheds light on the sexual dynamic of Dr. Marsch and Victor Trenchard. Much of the movie involves the notion of doubles and balanced pairs, but rather than enumerate more than a single example--director Alfred Hitchcock carrying his own doppleganger, a double base--I'd prefer you watched the film (it's shown frequently on AMC for those of you whose cable systems carry it; also many libraries and video rental stores stock it). Instead I'd rather concentrate on one of the film's stronger subtexts--that Bruno, the Robert Walker character, is an aggressive homosexual, while Guy, the Farley Granger character, is the latent closet type.
Bruno indeed seems rather flamboyant and has attempted to strike a deal with Guy; i.e., Bruno will kill Guy's sluttish wife for him (she won't divorce Guy and Guy wants to remarry) if Guy will kill Bruno's stern wealthy father. Bruno comes through with his end of the deal, strangling Guy's wife (the scene is later recapitulated in a mock strangle where Bruno also ritually strangles his own mother), but Guy is horrified when he finds out. Despite Bruno's attempt to frame him he refuses to kill Bruno's father. Eventually, Bruno is killed during a somewhat pschyosexualizied frenzied denouement involving a carousel; but later on a train, when a minister asks Guy if he's not the famous tennis player Guy Haines (the line is exactly the same as Bruno's first line), Guy and his bride-to-be retreat from the minister. Guy's refusal to identify himself, as well as his less than staunch commitment to marriage (the latent homosexual angle), recall for me Victor's assumption of Dr. Marsch's personality, as well as his later strangling a la Guy his abo catgirl friend. Marsch, of course, is not flamboyantly gay, but as I mention in Marschian Sexuality, I do believe there is enough to implicate him as a homosexual. He too dies at the hands of Victor/Guy; while later in prison Victor recalls the instrument used by mohels in the rite of circumcision--the fact that he remains ignorant of its function symbolizing his latent homosexuality, since even Victor (who narrates this section of V.R.T. in the first person) may not realize or accept the fact he could be anything other than the straight cocksman he believes himself to be.