Download or read book Hitchcock and the Censors written by John Billheimer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to contend with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined. From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code Office controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the United States. During their review of Hitchcock's films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films. In his award-winning Hitchcock and the Censors, author John Billheimer traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock's interactions with code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films. Despite the often-arbitrary decisions of the code board, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming—and occasionally tricking—the censors, and by swapping off bits of dialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. By examining Hitchcock's priorities in dealing with the censors, this work highlights the director's theories of suspense as well as his magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials.
Download or read book The Hitchcock Murders written by Peter Conrad and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alfred Hitchcock relished his power to frighten us and believed the shocks he administered improved our psychological health. But he could never satisfactorily explain our curiosity to see forbidden things or the perverse desire to experience anxiety and dread that made his work so popular. In The Hitchcock Murders, Peter Conrad, one of Hitchcock's eager victims, undertakes the task on the master's behalf. At the age of thirteen, Conrad snuck into his first screening of Psycho, and he's been wary of showers and fruit cellars ever since. Thanks to Hitchcock, he's also suspicious of staircases, seagulls, and crop-dusting planes. Now he sets out to analyze the nature of Hitchcock's appeal to both himself and the millions of moviegoers for whom Hitchcock is cinema's foremost auteur. Examining Hitchcock's use of religion, morality, conscience, culpability, and literary symbols, Conrad unveils a chilling Nietzschean universe-one in which there is no God and no moral standard, where humans are petty and disposable and the neutral hand of fate can take a life in the blink of an eye. A timid, respectable man with the imagination of a psychopath, a chubby jester whose practical jokes took merciless advantage of human insecurities, Hitchcock is revealed here as the man who knew too much-about all of us.
Download or read book Hollywood s Censor written by Thomas Doherty and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1934 to 1954 Joseph I. Breen, a media-savvy Victorian Irishman, reigned over the Production Code Administration, the Hollywood office tasked with censoring the American screen. Though little known outside the ranks of the studio system, this former journalist and public relations agent was one of the most powerful men in the motion picture industry. As enforcer of the puritanical Production Code, Breen dictated "final cut" over more movies than anyone in the history of American cinema. His editorial decisions profoundly influenced the images and values projected by Hollywood during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Cultural historian Thomas Doherty tells the absorbing story of Breen's ascent to power and the widespread effects of his reign. Breen vetted story lines, blue-penciled dialogue, and excised footage (a process that came to be known as "Breening") to fit the demands of his strict moral framework. Empowered by industry insiders and millions of like-minded Catholics who supported his missionary zeal, Breen strove to protect innocent souls from the temptations beckoning from the motion picture screen. There were few elements of cinematic production beyond Breen's reach he oversaw the editing of A-list feature films, low-budget B movies, short subjects, previews of coming attractions, and even cartoons. Populated by a colorful cast of characters, including Catholic priests, Jewish moguls, visionary auteurs, hardnosed journalists, and bluenose agitators, Doherty's insightful, behind-the-scenes portrait brings a tumultuous era and an individual both feared and admired to vivid life.
Download or read book Better Left Unsaid written by Nora Gilbert and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-09 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Better Left Unsaid is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife—the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film—this book reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art. As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a "censored" commodity—thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock written by Jonathan Freedman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The New Censorship written by Joel Simon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School
Download or read book Irish Film Censorship written by Kevin Rockett and published by Four Courts Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book maps the history of Irish film censorship from its origins in the 1910s, through to the all-encompassing Censorship of Films Act 1923, the more liberal implementation of screening policies from the late 1960s onwards, and present-day concerns about media proliferation and distribution. Its main focus is on the 1920-70 period, when Irish film censors banned 3,000 films and cut an additional 10,000. The role of political censorship and its effect on television and cinema is examined, as are the more contemporary issues of video classification and debates around the internet and child pornography. Through the examination of over 18,000 of the censors decisions, Kevin Rockett provides an invaluable insight into the cultural geography of Ireland. - Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2005
Download or read book Hitchcock Piece by Piece written by Laurent Bouzereau and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects text and removable facsimile reproductions of memorabilia from throughout his sixty-year career, including letters, memos, snapshots, storyboards, Hitchcock's birth and marriage certificates, and examining the characters and plots in his films.
Download or read book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho written by Stephen Rebello and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2010-06-16 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “meticulous history” of the classic suspense film based on exclusive interviews with the director, writers, cast, and crew (The New York Times Book Review). First released in June 1960, Psycho altered the landscape of horror films forever. But just as compelling as the movie itself is the story behind it, which has been adapted as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as his wife Alma Reville, and Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh. Stephen Rebello brings to life the creation of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, from the story of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, the real-life inspiration for the character of Norman Bates, to Hitchcock’s groundbreaking achievements in cinematography, sound, editing, and promotion. Packed with captivating insights from the film’s stars, writers, and crewmembers, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is a riveting and definitive history of a signature Hitchcock cinematic masterpiece.
Download or read book Hitchcock and the Spy Film written by James Chapman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film historian James Chapman has mined Hitchcock's own papers to investigate fully for the first time the spy thrillers of the world's most famous filmmaker. Hitchcock made his name as director of the spy movie. He returned repeatedly to the genre from the British classics of the 1930s, including The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, through wartime Hollywood films Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur to the Cold War tracts North by Northwest, Torn Curtain and his unmade film The Short Night. Chapman's close reading of these films demonstrates the development of Hitchcock's own style as well as how the spy genre as a whole responded to changing political and cultural contexts from the threat of Nazism in the 1930s and 40s to the atom spies and double agents of the post-war world.
Download or read book Censorship of Japanese Films During the U S Occupation of Japan written by Lars-Martin Sorensen and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous books on Japanese film have focused on important directors, such as Gosho, Naruse, Kurosawa and Ozu, and many fine histories of Japanese film have been written. Sorensen's English-language book focuses exclusively upon the occupation period and its effects on cinema. By offering this interpretation of cinema during the occupation, Sorensen gives us a new cultural history of the period.
Download or read book The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia written by Stephen Whitty and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several decades after his last motion picture was produced, Alfred Hitchcock is still regarded by critics and fans alike as one of the masters of cinema. From silents of the 1920s to his final feature in 1976, the director’s many films continue to entertain audiences and inspire filmmakers. In The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia, film critic Stephen Whitty provides a detailed overview of the director's work. This reference volume features in-depth critical entries on each of his major films as well as biographical essays on his most frequent collaborators and discussions of significant themes in his work. For this book, Whitty draws on primary-source materials such as interviews he conducted with associates of the director—including screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Marnie), actresses Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest) and Kim Novak (Vertigo), actor Farley Granger (Strangers on a Train), actor and producer Norman Lloyd (Saboteur), and Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia (Stage Fright; Psycho)—among others. Encompassing the entire range of the director’s career—from early influences and silent films to his decade-long television show and cameos in nearly every feature—this is a comprehensive overview of cinema’s ultimate showman. A detailed and lively look at the master of suspense, The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia will be of interest to professors, students, and the many fans of the director’s work.
Download or read book Clues A Journal of Detection Vol 40 No 2 Fall 2022 written by Elizabeth Foxwell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-12-20 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two decades, Clues has included the best scholarship on mystery and detective fiction. With a combination of academic essays and nonfiction book reviews, it covers all aspects of mystery and detective fiction material in print, television and movies. As the only American scholarly journal on mystery fiction, Clues is essential reading for literature and film students and researchers; popular culture aficionados; librarians; and mystery authors, fans and critics around the globe.
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 563 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 Hitchcock s Music written by Jack Sullivan and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderfully coherent, comprehensive, groundbreaking, and thoroughly engaging study” of how the director of Psycho and The Birds used music in his films (Sidney Gottlieb, editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock). Alfred Hitchcock employed more musical styles and techniques than any film director in history, from Marlene Dietrich singing Cole Porter in Stage Fright to the revolutionary electronic soundtrack of The Birds. Many of his films—including Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho—are landmarks in the history of film music. Now author and musicologist Jack Sullivan presents the first in-depth study of the role music plays in Hitchcock’s films. Based on extensive interviews with composers, writers, and actors, as well as archival research, Sullivan discusses how Hitchcock used music to influence his cinematic atmospheres, characterizations, and even storylines. Sullivan examines the director’s relationships with various composers, especially Bernard Herrmann, and tells the stories behind some of their now-iconic musical choices. Covering the entire director’s career, from the early British works up to Family Plot, this engaging work will change the way we watch—and listen—to Hitchcock’s movies.
Download or read book Hitchcock and the Methods of Suspense written by William Hare and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alfred Hitchcock had a gift for turning the familiar into the unfamiliar, the mundane into the unexpected. A director known for planning the entire movie before the first day of filming began by using the storyboard approach, Hitchcock was renowned for his relaxed directing style, resulting in an excellent rapport with his actors. Decades later, Hitchcock's films stand as sterling examples of innovative technique, infused with meaning that only repeated viewing can reveal. This work examines themes, techniques, and the filmmaking process in 15 of Hitchcock's best known films: The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Frenzy and Family Plot. It explores the auteur's treatments of psychoanalysis, voyeurism, and collective fears during the Cold War. Also presented are key stories behind several Hitchcock classics, such as the director's stormy relationships with Raymond Chandler and David O. Selznick that resulted in synergetic success for some of his most successful films. The book includes numerous photographs and an extensive bibliography.
Download or read book Hitchcock at the Source written by R. Barton Palmer and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The adaptation of literary works to the screen has been the subject of increasing, and increasingly sophisticated, critical and scholarly attention in recent years, but most studies of the subject have continued to privilege literature over film by taking the literary sources as their starting point. Rather than examining the processes by which a particular author has been adapted into a diversity of films by different filmmakers, the contributors in Hitchcock at the Source consider the processes by which a varied range of literary sources have been transformed by one filmmaker into an impressive body of work. Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock transformed a variety of literary sources—novels, plays, short stories—into what is arguably the most coherent and distinctive (narratively, stylistically, and thematically) of all directorial oeuvres. After an introduction surveying the nature and diversity of Hitchcock's sources and locating the current volume in the context of theoretical work on adaptation, nineteen original essays range across the entirety of Hitchcock's career, from the silent period through to the 1970s. In addition to addressing the process of adaptation in particular films in terms of plot and character, the contributors also consider less obvious matters of tone, technique, and ideology; Hitchcock's manipulation of the conventions of literary and dramatic genres such as spy fiction and romantic comedy; and more general problems, such as Hitchcock's shift from plays to novels as his major sources in the course of the 1930s.
