Hitchcock

Book Description :

Based on the famous series of dialogues between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock from the 1960s, the book moves chronologically through Hitchcock's films to discuss his career, techniques, and effects he achieved. It changed the way Hitchcock was perceived, as a popular director of suspense films - such as Psycho and The Birds - and revealed to moviegoers and critics, the depth of Hitchcock's perception and his mastery of the art form. As a result of the changed perceptions about Hitchcock, his masterpiece, Vertigo, hit the No 1 slot in Sight & Sound's recent poll of film-makers and critics, displacing Citizen Kane as the Best Film of all time.

Book Description :

This definitive illustrated survey of all of Alfred Hitchcock's films is a book no movie buff or Hitchcock fan can afford to be without. The monumental scope of Alfred Hitchcock's work remains unsurpassed by any other movie director, past or present. So many of his movies have achieved classic status that even a partial list—Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, Vertigo, Spellbound—brings a flood of memories. In this essential text, reissued on the occasion of Hitchcock's centennial, internationally renowned Hitchcock authority Donald Spoto describes and analyzes every movie made by this master filmmaker. Illustrated throughout with shots from each film, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock also includes a storyboard section, a complete filmography, and “A Hitchcock Album” (sixteen pages of photos) as an added celebration of his life.

Book Description :

Haeffner is less interested in the concept of the Freudian subconscious or in the torment said to lurk deep inside Hitchcock. Instead, he examines the force that has been called Hitchcock's genius in the light of his social & economic situation, providing a novel reading of his cinematic work.

Book Description :

From the beginning of his career, Alfred Hitchcock wanted to be considered an artist. Although his thrillers were immensely popular, and Hitchcock himself courted reviewers, he was, for many years, regarded as no more than a master craftsman. By the 1960s, though, critics began calling him an artist of unique vision and gifts. What happened to make Hitchcock's reputation as a true innovator and singular talent? Through a close examination of Hitchcock's personal papers, scripts, production notes, publicity files, correspondence, and hundreds of British and American reviews, Robert Kapsis here traces Hitchcock's changing critical fortunes. Vertigo, for instance, was considered a flawed film when first released; today it is viewed by many as the signal achievement of a great director. According to Kapsis, this dramatic change occurred because the making of the Hitchcock legend was not solely dependent on the quality of his films. Rather, his elevation to artist was caused by a successful blending of self-promotion, sponsorship by prominent members of the film community, and, most important, changes in critical theory which for the first time allowed for the idea of director as auteur. Kapsis also examines the careers of several other filmmakers who, like Hitchcock, have managed to cross the line that separates craftsman from artist, and shows how Hitchcock's legacy and reputation shed light on the way contemporary reputations are made. In a chapter about Brian De Palma, the most reknowned thriller director since Hitchcock, Kapsis explores how Hitchcock's legacy has affected contemporary work in—and criticism of—the thriller genre. Filled with fascinating anecdotes and intriguing excerpts, and augmented by interviews with Hitchcock's associates, this thoroughly documented and engagingly written book will appeal to scholars and film enthusiasts alike. "Required reading for Hitchcock scholars...scrupulously researched, invaluable material for those who continue to ask: what made the master tick?"—Anthony Perkins

Book Description :

Among the abundant Alfred Hitchcock literature, Hitchcock's Motifs has found a fresh angle. Starting from recurring objects, settings, character-types and events, Michael Walker tracks some forty motifs, themes and clusters across the whole of Hitchcock's oeuvre, including not only all his 52 extant feature films but also representative episodes from his TV series. Connections and deeper inflections that Hitchcock fans may have long sensed or suspected can now be seen for what they are: an intricately spun web of cross-references which gives this unique artist's work the depth, consistency and resonance that justifies Hitchcock's place as probably the best know film director ever. The title, the first book-length study of the subject, can be used as a mini-encyclopaedia of Hitchcock's motifs, but the individual entries also give full attention to the wider social contexts, hidden sources and the sometimes unconscious meanings present in the work and solidly linking it to its time and place.

Book Description :

In his most innovative and technically challenging film, The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock follows the success of Psycho with a modernist, avant garde horror-thriller, which has spawned many imitators and triggered the cycle for disaster and man versus nature films. Now to mark The Birds' 50th anniversary in 2013 and the digitally restored Blu-Ray release, The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds is the first book-length treatment on the production of this modernist masterpiece. Featuring new interviews with stars Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Veronica Cartwright, as well as sketches and storyboards from Hitchcock's A-List technical team, Robert Boyle, Albert Whitlock and Harold Michelson, the book charts every aspect of the film's production all set against the tumultuous backdrop of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and JFK's presidency. Using unpublished material from the Alfred Hitchcock Collection, Evan Hunter files, Peggy Robertson papers and Robert Boyle's artwork, this book will be the ultimate guide to Hitchcock's most ambitious film.

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A reissued classic that examines the structure and themes of each of Hitchcock's British feature films.

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Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light is the definitive biography of the Master of Suspense and the most widely recognized film director of all time. In a career that spanned six decades and produced more than 60 films – including The 39 Steps, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds – Alfred Hitchcock set new standards for cinematic invention and storytelling. Acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan re-examines his life and extraordinary work, challenging perceptions of Hitchcock as the “macabre Englishman” and sexual obsessive, and reveals instead the ingenious craftsman, trickster, provocateur, and romantic. With insights into his relationships with Hollywood legends – such as Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, and Grace Kelly – as well as his 54-year marriage to Alma Reville and his inspirations in the thriller genre, the book is full of the same dark humor, cliffhanger suspense, and revelations that are synonymous with one of the most famous and misunderstood figures in cinema.

Book Description :

A fresh, innovative biography of the twentieth century’s most iconic filmmaker. In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon—what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core, and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world. The book’s twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock’s life and work: “The Boy Who Couldn’t Grow Up”; “The Murderer”; “The Auteur”; “The Womanizer”; “The Fat Man”; “The Dandy”; “The Family Man”; “The Voyeur”; “The Entertainer”; “The Pioneer”; “The Londoner”; “The Man of God.” Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived but also the various versions of himself that he projected, and those projected on his behalf. From Hitchcock’s early work in England to his most celebrated films, White astutely analyzes Hitchcock’s oeuvre and provides new interpretations. He also delves into Hitchcock’s ideas about gender; his complicated relationships with “his women”—not only Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren but also his female audiences—as well as leading men such as Cary Grant, and writes movingly of Hitchcock’s devotion to his wife and lifelong companion, Alma, who made vital contributions to numerous classic Hitchcock films, and burnished his mythology. And White is trenchant in his assessment of the Hitchcock persona, so carefully created that Hitchcock became not only a figurehead for his own industry but nothing less than a cultural icon. Ultimately, White’s portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist, and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.

Book Description :

When Hitchcock's Films was first published, it quickly became known as a new kind of book on film and as a necessary text in the growing body of Hitchcock criticism. This revised edition of Hitchcock's Films Revisited includes a substantial new preface in which Wood reveals his personal history as a critic -- including his coming out as a gay man, his views on his previous critical work, and how his writings, his love of film, and his personal life and have remained deeply intertwined through the years. This revised edition also includes a new chapter on Marnie.

Book Description :

Alfred Hitchcock made many great films, but he also made many that critics and audiences largely dismissed. These least celebrated films, despite their admitted flaws and relative obscurity, offer much to reward the open-minded viewer. This critical study examines and reappraises fifteen such films generally overlooked by scholars and Hitchcock aficionados: Juno and the Paycock, The Skin Game, Waltzes from Vienna, Jamaica Inn, The Paradine Case, Under Capricorn, I Confess, Torn Curtain, Number Seventeen, Rich and Strange, Secret Agent, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Stage Fright, The Wrong Man, and Topaz. Each film is discussed and analyzed in detail, revealing the master's touch in many previously unheralded ways. Brief assessments of the films from popular review compendia introduce each one, and excerpted highlights of numerous works of scholarship are liberally sprinkled throughout the text. In addition, wonderful rare still photographs from each film are included. Readers will come away with a richer sense of the director's talents in these films, adding to their appreciation of his work in unexpected ways.

Book Description :

Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the most famous director to have ever made a film. Almost single-handedly he turned the suspense thriller into one of the most popular film genres of all time, while his Psycho updated the horror film and inspired two generations of directors to imitate and adapt this most Hitchcockian of movies. Yet while much scholarly and popular attention has focused on the director's oeuvre, until now there has been no extensive study of how Alfred Hitchcock's films and methods have affected and transformed the history of the film medium. In this book, thirteen original essays by leading film scholars reveal the richness and variety of Alfred Hitchcock's legacy as they trace his shaping influence on particular films, filmmakers, genres, and even on film criticism. Some essays concentrate on films that imitate Hitchcock in diverse ways, including the movies of Brian de Palma and thrillers such as True Lies, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dead Again. Other essays look at genres that have been influenced by Hitchcock's work, including the 1970s paranoid thriller, the Italian giallo film, and the post-Psycho horror film. The remaining essays investigate developments within film culture and academic film study, including the enthusiasm of French New Wave filmmakers for Hitchcock's work, his influence on the filmic representation of violence in the post-studio Hollywood era, and the ways in which his films have become central texts for film theorists.

Book Description :

This second volume presents the director's work as a radical collage of images and absences, letters and numbers, citations and sounds that together mark Hitchcock as a knowing figure who was entirely aware of this - and cinema's place at the dawn of a global media culture, as well as the cinema's revolutionary impact on perception and memory.

Book Description :

Alfred Hitchcock called the silent "the purest form of cinema," and the ten silent films he directed between 1925 and 1929 reveal the young director's mature artistry. Hitchcock's silents have often been characterized as the work of a talented amateur, a young director practicing his craft during a pre-sound era of antiquated instruments and poor film techniques--the director experimented with myriad points of view, unique camera angles and movements, and special effects such as dissolves, blurriness, and violent cuts. These films, however, contain the first appearances of some of his greatest and most familiar techniques: the vertigo-inducing crowd scene, the symbolic use of inanimate objects, the manipulation of the audience's emotions, and the self-conscious, often macabre wit. This work discovers Hitchcock's early talent and skill through close readings of the films from The Pleasure Garden to the silent version of Blackmail, using shot-by-shot descriptions and interpretations. Each film's chapter includes technical information, a summary of the critical response from the film's release to the present, and detailed analysis of the camera techniques and themes Hitchcock uses.

Book Description :

Meet the inventor of modern horror. This complete guide to the Hitchcock canon is a movie buff's dream: from his 1925 debut The Pleasure Garden to 1976's swan song Family Plot, we trace the filmmaker's entire life and career. With a detailed entry for each of Hitchcock's 53 movies, this book combines insightful texts, updated photography, and an illustrated list of all the master's cameos.

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The author focuses on the way that music has infiltrated Hitchcock’s thinking as a director, from his earliest silent films to his last works.

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Offers new and compelling perspectives on the deeply moral nature of Hitchcock’s films. In his essays and interviews, Alfred Hitchcock was guarded about substantive matters of morality, preferring instead to focus on discussions of technique. That has not, however, discouraged scholars and critics from trying to work out what his films imply about such moral matters as honesty, fidelity, jealousy, courage, love, and loyalty. Through discussions and analyses of such films as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Frenzy, the contributors to this book strive to throw light on the way Hitchcock depicts a moral—if not amoral or immoral—world. Drawing on perspectives from film studies, philosophy, literature, and other disciplines, they offer new and compelling interpretations of the filmmaker’s moral gaze and the inflection point it provides for modern cinema.

Book Description :

Why are we drawn to the work of Alfred Hitchcock so long after his final film appeared? What is the source of Hitchcock’s magic? This book answers these questions by focussing upon the fabric of the films themselves, upon the way in which they enlist and sustain our desire, holding our attention by constantly withholding something from us.

Book Description :

In the process of providing the most extensive analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window to date, John Fawell also dismantles many myths and clichés about Hitchcock, particularly in regard to his attitude toward women. Although Rear Window masquerades quite successfully as a piece of light entertainment, Fawell demonstrates just how complex the film really is. It is a film in which Hitchcock, the consummate virtuoso, was in full command of his technique. One of Hitchcock's favorite films, Rear Window offered the ideal venue for the great director to fully use the tricks and ideas he acquired over his previous three decades of filmmaking. Yet technique alone did not make this classic film great; one of Hitchcock's most personal films, Rear Window is characterized by great depth of feeling. It offers glimpses of a sensibility at odds with the image Hitchcock created for himself?that of the grand ghoul of cinema who mocks his audience with a slick and sadistic style. Though Hitchcock is often labeled a misanthrope and misogynist, Fawell finds evidence in Rear Window of a sympathy for the loneliness that leads to voyeurism and crime, as well as an empathy for the film's women. Fawell emphasizes a more feeling, humane spirit than either Hitchcock's critics have granted him or Hitchcock himself admitted to, and does so in a manner of interest to film scholars and general readers alike.

Book Description :

This book offers a new approach to film studies by showing how our brains use our interpretations of various other films in order to understand Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Borrowing from behavioral psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, author Robert J. Belton seeks to explain differences of critical opinion as inevitable. The book begins by introducing the hermeneutic spiral, a cognitive processing model that categorizes responses to Vertigo’s meaning, ranging from wide consensus to wild speculations of critical “outliers.” Belton then provides an overview of the film, arguing that different interpreters literally see and attend to different things. The fourth chapter builds on this conclusion, arguing that because people see different things, one can force the production of new meanings by deliberately drawing attention to unusual comparisons. The latter chapters outline a number of such comparisons—including avant-garde films and the works of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch—to shed new light on the meanings of Vertigo.