For those of you unfamiliar with the word, ?maguffin? is a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock and possibly one of the most useful words in the English language.

The maguffin is that object (or sometimes person) in a narrative which provides the plot with a premise and the hero with a purpose. One of the reasons Hitchcock was The Master (and the reasons are many) is that he realised the audience doesn?t actually give a crap what the maguffin is, provided it allows for clever twists and just enough brooding, unpleasant and foreboding threat to keep the audience interested for the duration.

Perhaps the most famous maguffin in history is the Holy Grail, although the Maltese Falcon in the John Huston film of the same name leaps more easily to the film buff?s mind. In fiction, the quest is everything ? its object merely secondary. In 'The Lord of the Rings', for example, the One Ring is the maguffin. The characters may care passionately about it, but to the audience it is merely a handy excuse for Frodo Baggins to go on his adventures.

Prize or curse

The maguffin can be a prize, a reward, or it can be a destructive object that must be stopped at all costs. Or it can seem to be the one but turn out to be the other, as in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. Of course, it helps if the maguffin is something interesting and original ? a secret that cracks an ancient code, for example, or a cursed pirate ship called The Black Pearl ? but it is of little moment provided that the action can hold one?s attention.

TV shows have maguffins, too. In '24' the maguffin changes each season ? and sometimes from episode to episode. In Season two it is the nuke, then the Cyprus recording which proves the nuke was a red herring intended to start a war for profit.

Another great source of maguffins is 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. From the soul of a vampire suffering a gypsy vengeance curse to a key in human form that unlocks the gates of hell to a gem that causes an entire town to sing and dance their every thought and feeling, Joss Whedon and his writing team seldom failed to dish up exciting ? and unusually memorable ? maguffins for the fans to follow.

Pulling it off

Occasionally the maguffin proves to have no worth, or loses its value ? thus rendering the foregoing action completely futile. This is difficult to pull off, and when filmmakers screw it up, one feels cheated. Then there?s that deliciously squeamish sense of tragicomic injustice when they get it just right. Two cases of filmmakers who managed it perfectly are John Huston (in 'The Maltese Falcon') and Tony Scott (in 'True Romance').

KATHY HOFMEYR

would like to be remembered as a best-selling author, a little-known blues singer and perhaps someone?s favourite aunt. She lives in Jo?burg with her dogs, two pure-bred mongrels named Harpo and Buffy.

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In the former, a classic film noir, a veritable mob of underworld nasties are pulling out all the stops to gain access to a legendary treasure ? so legendary it has been dismissed as mythical. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade must follow the trail of bodies and clues to find the priceless statue of a bird rumoured to have been fashioned by the Knights of Malta out of pure gold and encrusted with jewels.

The statue, it is said, has been disguised as a worthless brown curio for safety. Once the villainous Fat Man (Stanley Greenstreet) gets his trembling hands on the prize and begins to scrape off the outer layer, the bird turns out to be? merely a worthless brown clay object, thus making the investment in time, crime, money and body count ? in fact, the entire quest ? utterly futile. Rather than feeling disappointed and frustrated, an audience cannot help but relish the cruel irony of the film?s surprise ending.

Cocaine waste

Ditto at the conclusion of 'True Romance', the story of a newlywed couple (Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette) who accidentally steal a suitcase full of cocaine from a dealer/pimp. Rather than try to return it, which may be their undoing, they decide to take it on the road and sell it to rival dealers, earning a tidy nest egg with which to restart their lives in suburbia with the requisite two-point-four kids and an SUV.

The two then travel across the country, meeting several eccentric characters (including Brad Pitt in a stunningly comic turn as a stoner who spends his life on a couch glued to a bong and Christopher Walken as the world?s most terrifying gangster) and leaving a trail of chaos behind them. In the final scene the various baddies come together in a hotel room and a shoot-out ensues, leaving most of the cast dead and the cocaine shot to bits in a glorious cloud of elaborate waste.

Of course, the man who coined the term created some of the best maguffins in the history of cinema ? precisely (and paradoxically) because they are not memorable at all. Hitchcock?s extraordinary films are eminently watchable to this day, even by those seldom captivated by classic movies.

But who can remember what Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman were spying for in 'Notorious'? We remember the exquisite performances, the suspense, the pure, overarching malice of Claude Rains and his evil mother? but we don?t really care that what was at the centre of all the hoo-hah was a batch of uranium.

'The Great Whatzit'

One of my favourite maguffins appears in a little-known cult film from the '50s called 'Kiss Me Deadly'. Based on the Mickey Spillane novel of the same name, it is a harsh, brutal thriller about a mysterious, glowing suitcase which contains something unknown but potentially very powerful (aficionados of 'Pulp Fiction' will remember Tarantino?s affectionate reference to this maguffin in a scene involving Marcellus Wallace?s briefcase). All that is known is that people have died seeking it, protecting it and by coming into proximity with it.

There is a great deal of hinting about nuclear destruction ('KMD' is one of the first films to deal with this now-hackneyed threat) and the final scene certainly is very reminiscent of a nuclear explosion, but it is never made explicit. At one point Velda, Mike Hammer?s girl Friday, cynically articulates the importance of the maguffin: ?You want to avenge the death of your dear friend. How touching. How sweet. How nicely it justifies your quest for The Great Whatzit.?

For Mike, tragedy justifies giving his all to finding the maguffin, the Great Whatzit; for the audience, the Great Whatzit justifies there ever having been a film at all.