A Companion To Alfred Hitchcock

The most comprehensive volume ever published on Alfred Hitchcock, covering his career and legacy as well as the broader cultural and intellectual contexts of his work. Contains thirty chapters by the leading Hitchcock scholars Covers his long career, from his earliest contributions to other directors’ silent films to his last uncompleted last film Details the enduring legacy he left to filmmakers and audiences alike

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 thirty-year American career.

Under the arrangement of Universal Studios, this reference is a complete guide to the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television series. This book offers a "behind-the-scenes" look at the making of the episodes, a complete production history, and more than 100 photos.

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.

Nicholas Haeffner provides a comprehensive introduction to Alfred Hitchcock's major British and Hollywood films and usefully navigates the reader through a wealth of critical commentaries. One of the acknowledged giants of film, Hitchcock's prolific half-century career spanned the silent and sound eras and resulted in 53 films of which Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) are now seen as classics within the suspense, melodrama and horror genres. In contrast to previous works, which have attempted to get inside Hitchcock's mind and psychoanalyse his films, this book takes a more materialist stance. As Haeffner makes clear, Hitchcock was simultaneously a professional film maker working as part of a team in the film factories of Hollywood, a media celebrity, and an aspiring artist gifted with considerable entrepreneurial flair for marketing himself and his films. The book makes a case for locating the director's remarkable body of work within traditions of highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow culture, appealing to different audience constituencies in a calculated strategy. The book upholds the case for taking Hitchcock's work seriously and challenges his popular reputation as a misogynist through detailed analyses of his most controversial films.

Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Biography An Economist Best Book of 2021 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.

This second volume of Alfred Hitchcock’s reflections on his life and work and the art of cinema contains material long out of print, not easily accessible, and in some cases forgotten or unknown. Edited by Sidney Gottlieb, this new collection of interviews, articles with the great director's byline, and “as-told-to” pieces provides an enlivening perspective on a career that spanned seven decades and transformed the history of cinema. In writings and interviews imbued with the same exuberance and originality that he brought to his films, Hitchcock ranges from accounts of his own life and experiences to provocative comments on filmmaking techniques and cinema in general. Wry, thoughtful, witty, and humorous—as well as brilliantly informative and insightful—this volume contains much valuable material that adds to our understanding and appreciation of a titan who decades after his death remains one of the most renowned and influential of all filmmakers. François Truffaut once said that Hitchcock “had given more thought to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues.” This profound contemplation of his art is superbly captured in the pieces from all periods of Hitchcock’s career gathered in this volume, which reveal fascinating details about how he envisioned and attempted to create a “pure cinema” that was entertaining, commercially successful, and artistically ambitious and innovative in an environment that did not always support this lofty goal.

The first comprehensively illustrated look at the career of Alfred Hitchcock. In the tradition of the acclaimed The Hammer Story, it is an authoritative, film-by-film guide to 'the Master' and his work, from the early silent days of The Lodger, through his classic British period of The 39 Steps, to the Hollywood success of Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and beyond. Packed with hundreds of stills and posters, with many rare or unseen images, and with additional features including the director's famous cameos, this is the ultimate book for the Hitchcock fan.