The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock

This Companion provides a set of new perspectives on a much-loved and hugely influential director.

Jonathan Freedman (Edited by)

9781107514881, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 July 2015

282 pages, 39 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.5 cm, 0.41 kg

Alfred Hitchcock was, despite his English origins and early career, an American master. Arriving on US shores in 1939, for the next three decades he created a series of masterpieces that redefined the nature and possibilities of cinema itself: Rebecca, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho, to name just a few. In this Companion, leading film scholars and critics of American culture and imagination trace Hitchcock's interplay with the Hollywood studio system, the Cold War, and new forms of sexuality, gender and desire over his American career. This Companion explores the way in which Hitchcock was transformed by the country where he made his home and did much of his greatest work. This book will be invaluable as a guide for both fans and students of Hitchcock and twentieth-century American culture, providing a set of new perspectives on a much-loved and hugely influential director.

1. Cycling through: Hitchcock and the studio system Thomas Schatz
2. Making the brand Janet Staiger
3. Hitchcock on location: America, icons, and the place of illusion Sara Blair
4. Hitchcock, class, and noir Homer Pettey
5. American civilization and its discontents: the persistence of evil in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt Carl Freedman
6. Alfred Hitchcock and feminist film theory Susan White
7. Hitchcock and queer sexuality David Greven
8. Psycho and psychoanalysis Stephen Tiff
9. Expedient exaggeration and the scale of Cold War farce in North by Northwest Alan Nadel
10. Looking up: class, England, and America in The Men Who Knew Too Much Murray Pomerance
11. Seeing red: the color bleed in Hitchcock Brigitte Peucker
12. Live nude Hitchcock: final frenzies Mark Goble
13. The school of Hitchcock: in the wake of the master Jonathan Freedman.

Subject Areas: Media studies [JFD], Literary studies: general [DSB], Films, cinema [APF], Film, TV & radio [AP]