Download or read book Hitchcocks Cryptonymies written by Tom Cohen and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Download or read book Hitchcock s Cryptonymies War machines written by Tom Cohen and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hitchcock s Magic written by Neil Badmington and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hidden Hitchcock written by D. A. Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A way to rethink the ways we watch and engage with all films, not just the Hitchcockian ones.”—Popmatters No filmmaker has more successfully courted mass-audience understanding than Alfred Hitchcock, and none has been studied more intensively by scholars. In Hidden Hitchcock, D. A. Miller does what seems impossible: he discovers what has remained unseen in Hitchcock’s movies, a secret style that imbues his films with a radical duplicity. Focusing on three films—Strangers on a Train, Rope, and The Wrong Man—Miller shows how Hitchcock anticipates, even demands, a “Too-Close Viewer.” Dwelling within us all and vigilant even when everything appears to be in good order, this Too-Close Viewer attempts to see more than the director points out, to expand the space of the film and the duration of the viewing experience. And, thanks to Hidden Hitchcock, that obsessive attention is rewarded. In Hitchcock’s visual puns, his so-called continuity errors, and his hidden appearances (not to be confused with his cameos), Miller finds wellsprings of enigma. Hidden Hitchcock is a revelatory work that not only shows how little we know this best known of filmmakers, but also how near such too-close viewing comes to cinephilic madness.
Download or read book A Hitchcock Reader written by Marshall Deutelbaum and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of A Hitchcock Reader aims to preserve what has been so satisfying and successful in the first edition: a comprehensive anthology that may be used as a critical text in introductory or advanced film courses, while also satisfying Hitchcock scholars by representing the rich variety of critical responses to the director's films over the years. a total of 20 of Hitchcock's films are discussed in depth - many others are considered in passing section introductions by the editors that contextualize the essays and the films they discuss well-researched bibliographic references, which will allow readers to broaden the scope of their study of Alfred Hitchcock
Download or read book Hitchcock s Romantic Irony written by Richard Allen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Hitchcock a superficial, though brilliant, entertainer or a moralist? Do his films celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a new interpretation of the director's work, Richard Allen argues that Hitchcock orchestrates the narrative and stylistic idioms of popular cinema to at once celebrate and subvert the ideal of romance and to forge a distinctive worldview-the amoral outlook of the romantic ironist or aesthete. He describes in detail how Hitchcock's characteristic tone is achieved through a titillating combination of suspense and black humor that subverts the moral framework of the romantic thriller, and a meticulous approach to visual style that articulates the lure of human perversity even as the ideal of romance is being deliriously affirmed. Discussing more than thirty films from the director's English and American periods, Allen explores the filmmaker's adoption of the idioms of late romanticism, his orchestration of narrative point of view and suspense, and his distinctive visual strategies of aestheticism and expressionism and surrealism.
Download or read book Stars and Silhouettes written by Joceline Andersen and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stars and Silhouettes: The History of the Cameo Role in Hollywood traces the history of the cameo as it emerged in twentieth-century cinema. Although the cameo has existed in film culture for over a century, Joceline Andersen explains that this role cannot be strictly defined because it exists as a constellation of interactions between duration and recognition, dependent on who is watching and when. Even audiences of the twenty-first century who are inundated by the lives of movie stars and habituated to images of their personal friends on screens continue to find cameos surprising and engaging. Cameos reveal the links between our obsession with celebrity and our desire to participate in the powerful cultural industries within contemporary society. Chapter 1 begins with the cameo’s precedents in visual culture and the portrait in particular—from the Vitagraph executives in the 1910s to the emergence of actors as movie stars shortly after. Chapter 2 explores the fan-centric desire for behind-the-scenes visions of Hollywood that accounted for the success of cameo-laden, Hollywood-set films that autocratic studios used to make their glamorous line-up of stars as visible as possible. Chapter 3 traces the development of the cameo in comedy, where cameos began to show not only glimpses of celebrities at their best but also of celebrities at their worst. Chapter 4 examines how the television guest spot became an important way for stars and studios to market both their films and stars from other media in trades that reflected an increasingly integrated mediascape. In Chapter 5, Andersen examines auteur cameos and the cameo as a sign of authorship. Director cameos reaffirm the fan’s interest in the film not just as a stage for actors but as a forum for the visibility of the director. Cameos create a participatory space for viewers, where recognizing those singled out among extras and small roles allows fans to demonstrate their knowledge. Stars and Silhouettes belongs on the shelf of every scholar, student, and reader interested in film history and star studies.
Download or read book Classical Myth in Alfred Hitchcock s Wrong Man and Grace Kelly Films written by Mark William Padilla and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book treats six beloved films of Hitchcock: The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest, plus Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. Padilla reviews their production histories with an eye to classical influences, and then analyzes their links with Greek art, poetry, and philosophy.
Download or read book The San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock s Vertigo written by Douglas A. Cunningham and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays that examine the integrated relationship that the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo has with the history and culture of California and the San Francisco Bay area.
Download or read book Alfred Hitchcock s Vertigo and the Hermeneutic Spiral written by Robert J. Belton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Hitchcock the Anxiety of Authorship written by Leslie H. Abramson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hitchcock and the Anxiety of Authorship examines issues of cinema authorship engaged by and dynamized within the director's films. A unique study of self-reflexivity in Hitchcock's work from his earliest English silents to his final Hollywood features, this book considers how the director's releases constitute ever-shifting meditations on the conditions and struggles of creative agency in cinema. Abramson explores how, located in literal and emblematic sites of dramatic production, exhibition, and reception, and populated by figures of directors, actors, and audiences, Hitchcock's films exhibit a complicated, often disturbing vision of authorship - one that consistently problematizes rather than exemplifies the director's longstanding auteurist image. Viewing Hitchcock in a striking new light, Abramson analyzes these allegories of vexed agency in the context of his concepts of and commentary on the troubled association between cinema artistry and authorship, as well as the changing cultural, industrial, theoretical, and historical milieus in which his features were produced. Accordingly, the book illuminates how Hitchcock and his cinema register the constant dynamics that constitute film authorship.
Download or read book A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock written by Thomas Leitch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Eastern Approaches to Western Film written by Stephen Teo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern Approaches to Western Film: Asian Aesthetics and Reception in Cinema offers a renewed critical outlook on Western classic film directly from the pantheon of European and American masters, including Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Jean-Pierre Melville, John Ford, Leo McCarey, Sam Peckinpah, and Orson Welles. The book contributes an “Eastern Approach” into the critical studies of Western films by reappraising selected films of these masters, matching and comparing their visions, themes, and ideas with the philosophical and paradigmatic principles of the East. It traces Eastern inscriptions and signs embedded within these films as well as their social lifestyle values and other concepts that are also inherently Eastern. As such, the book represents an effort to reformulate established discourses on Western cinema that are overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Although it seeks to inject an alternative perspective, the ultimate aim is to reach a balance of East and West. By focusing on Eastern aesthetic and philosophical influences in Western films, the book suggests that there is a much more thorough integration of East and West than previously thought or imagined.
Download or read book Cultural Theory in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock written by Gary McCarron and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is neither biography nor a conventional film critique. Rather, the text explores aspects of Hitchcock’s work in relation to theories drawn from the social sciences and philosophy. The various chapters focus not on specific films, but on broader ideas central to Hitchcock’s work. There is, for instance, a chapter on his idea of the MacGuffin in which I use Ernesto Laclau’s theories of equivalent substitution to explain how the MacGuffin functions in Hitchcock’s works. There is also a chapter on his notion of ‘pure cinema’ which moves from the idea of purity as an anthropological concept to consider purity in relation to current debates regarding so-called hybrid media, and Hitchcock’s relevance to these issues in respect of his dissatisfaction with the advent of sound to the cinema world. Broadly speaking, the book uses Hitchcock’s films to illustrate ideas in the social sciences and philosophy and uses those same ideas to illustrate aspects of Hitchcock’s films.
Download or read book Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock written by Mark William Padilla and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock presents an original study of Alfred Hitchcock by considering how his classics-informed London upbringing marks some of his films. The Catholic and Irish-English Hitchcock (1899-1980) was born to a mercantile family and attended a Jesuit college preparatory, whose curriculum featured Latin and classical humanities. An important expression of Edwardian culture at-large was an appreciation for classical ideas, texts, images, and myth. Mark Padilla traces the ways that Hitchcock’s films convey mythical themes, patterns, and symbols, though they do not overtly reference them. Hitchcock was a modernist who used myth in unconscious ways as he sought to tell effective stories in the film medium. This book treats four representative films, each from a different decade of his early career. The first two movies were produced in London: The Farmer’s Wife (1928) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934); the second two in Hollywood: Rebecca (1940) and Strangers on a Train (1951). In close readings of these movies, Padilla discusses myths and literary texts such as the Judgment of Paris, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Aristophanes’s Frogs, Apuleius’s tale “Cupid and Psyche,” Homer’s Odyssey, and The Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Additionally, many Olympian deities and heroes have archetypal resonances in the films in question. Padilla also presents a new reading of Hitchcock’s circumstances as he entered film work in 1920 and theorizes why and how the films may be viewed as an expression of the classical tradition and of classical reception. This new and important contribution to the field of classical reception in the cinema will be of great value to classicists, film scholars, and general readers interested in these topics.
Download or read book The Men Who Knew Too Much written by Susan M. Griffin and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Men Who Knew Too Much innovatively pairs these two greats, showing them to be at once classic and contemporary. Over a dozen major scholars and critics take up works by James and Hitchcock, in paired sets, to explore the often surprising ways that reading James helps us watch Hitchcock and what watching Hitchcock tells us about reading James.
Download or read book Around the Book written by Henry Sussman and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A splendid addition to the now-long list of Professor Sussman's admirable books."---J. HILLIS MILLER, University of California, Irvine --
