Hitchcock S Cryptonymies

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.

Tom Cohen's radical exploration of Hitchcock's cinema departs from conventional approaches--psychoanalytic, feminist, political--to emphasize the dense web of signatures and markings inscribed on and around his films. Aligning Hitchcock's agenda with the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Benjamin, Cohen's project dramatically recasts the history and meaning of cinema itself. This first volume of "Hitchcock's Cryptonymies provides a singularly close reading of films such as "The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, and "North by Northwest, exposing the often imperceptible visual and aural puns, graphic elements, and cryptograms that traverse his entire body of work. Within Hitchcock's cinema, Cohen argues, these "secret agents" have more than just decorative or symbolic significance; they also reflect, critique, and disrupt traditional cinematic practice, undermining ways of seeing inherited from the Enlightenment and prefiguring postmodern culture. Cohen offers an unprecedented guide to the entirety of Hitchcock's labyrinthine signature system.

"Tom Cohen's radical exploration of Hitchcock's cinema departs from conventional approaches-psychoanalytic, feminist, political-to emphasize the dense web of signatures and markings inscribed on and around his films. Aligning Hitchcock's agenda with the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Benjamin, Cohen's project dramatically recasts the history and meaning of cinema itself.This first volume of Hitchcock's Cryptonymies provides a singularly close reading of films such as The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, and North by Northwest, exposing the often imperceptible visual and aural puns, graphic elements, and cryptograms that traverse his entire body of work. Within Hitchcock's cinema, Cohen argues, these "secret agents" have more than just decorative or symbolic significance; they also reflect, critique, and disrupt traditional cinematic practice, undermining ways of seeing inherited from the Enlightenment and prefiguring postmodern culture. From the recurrence of the eye motif and the frequency of names beginning with "Mar" to the role of memory and the director's trademark cameos, Cohen offers an unprecedented guide to the entirety of Hitchcock's labyrinthine signature system. At the same time, he liberates Hitchcock's works from film history (modernist, auteurist), revealing them as unsettled events in the archaeology of contemporary global image culture. Tom Cohen is professor of American literary, critical, and cinematic studies at the University at Albany. He is the author of Anti-Mimesis: From Plato to Hitchcock and Ideology and Inscription: "Cultural Studies" after Benjamin, and coeditor of Material Events (Minnesota, 2000)." -- Publisher.

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

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.

Features essays from some fifteen authors written about Hitchcock and five of his most significant films: Rear window, Vertigo, The man who knew too much, Rope, and The trouble with Harry.

Why are we still drawn to the work of Alfred Hitchcock so long after his final film appeared? What remains to see? What could there possibly be left to say about tales that are overwhelmingly familiar? Why, moreover, have many of Hitchcock's films entered the popular imagination and enjoyed an eventful life far from the screen? What is the source of Hitchcock's magic? This book answers these questions about the influence and ongoing appeal of Hitchcock's work 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. We keep watching, keep revisiting the stories, because there is always something left to see and know. The book combines detailed textual analysis of a number of Hitchcock's most famous films - Psycho, Rear Window, Rebecca, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Birds - with more general discussion of the director's complete body of work. Drawing upon the poststructuralist theories of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, it takes issue with the biographical and psychoanalytic approaches that have dominated studies of Hitchcock's films to argue instead for the significance of textuality. Hitchcock's Magic is an innovative, lively, and readable book which challenges critical orthodoxy and breaks new ground in the field.