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

Notes on Contributors x

Introduction 1
Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague

Part I Background 9

1. Hitchcock’s Lives 11
Thomas Leitch

2. Hitchcock’s Literary Sources 28
Ken Mogg

3. Hitchcock and Early Filmmakers 48
Charles Barr

4. Hitchcock’s Narrative Modernism: Ironies of Fictional Time 67
Thomas Hemmeter

Part II Genre 87

5. Hitchcock and Romance 89
Lesley Brill

6. Family Plots: Hitchcock and Melodrama 109
Richard R. Ness

7. Conceptual Suspense in Hitchcock’s Films 126
Paula Marantz Cohen

Part III Collaboration 139

8. “Tell Me the Story So Far”: Hitchcock and His Writers 141
Leland Poague

9. Suspicion: Collusion and Resistance in the Work of Hitchcock’s Female Collaborators 162
Tania Modleski

10. A Surface Collaboration: Hitchcock and Performance 181
Susan White

Part IV Style 199

11. Aesthetic Space in Hitchcock 201
Brigitte Peucker

12. Hitchcock and Music 219
Jack Sullivan

13. Some Hitchcockian Shots 237
Murray Pomerance

Part V Development 253

14. Hitchcock’s Silent Cinema 255
Sidney Gottlieb

15. Gaumont Hitchcock 270
Tom Ryall

16. Hitchcock Discovers America: The Selznick-Era Films 289
Ina Rae Hark

17. From Transatlantic to Warner Bros. 309
David Sterritt

18. Hitchcock, Metteur-en-scène: 1954–60 329
Joe McElhaney

19. The Universal Hitchcock 347
William Rothman

Part VI Auteurism 365

20. French Hitchcock, 1945–55 367
James M. Vest

21. Lost in Translation? Listening to the Hitchcock–Truffaut Interview 387
Janet Bergstrom

22. Robin Wood’s Hitchcock 405
Harry Oldmeadow

Part VII Ideology 425

23. Accidental Heroes and Gifted Amateurs: Hitchcock and Ideology 427
Toby Miller with Noel King

24. Hitchcock and Feminist Criticism: From Rebecca to Marnie 452
Florence Jacobowitz

25. Queer Hitchcock 473
Alexander Doty

Part VIII Ethics 491

26. Hitchcock and Philosophy 493
Richard Gilmore

27. Hitchcock’s Ethics of Suspense: Psychoanalysis and the Devaluation of the Object 508
Todd McGowan

28. Occasions of Sin: The Forgotten Cigarette Lighter and Other Moral Accidents in Hitchcock 529
George Toles

Part IX Beyond Hitchcock 553

29. Hitchcock and the Postmodern 555
Angelo Restivo

30. Hitchcock’s Legacy 572
Richard Allen

Index 592

“In summation, A Companion to Hitchcock will be required reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in this director’s films." (Cercles, 1 September 2014)

“Teachers and students alike will find much to keep themselves busy in A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock.” (Psychobabble200, 20 March 2014)

"A great resource for students of Hitchcock's films, craft, thought, influences, and aesthetics. Summing Up: Highly recommended." - Choice

“In my view this book is the most exciting work on Hitchcock and one which will become a prime source for Hitchcockian scholars.” – Reference Reviews Thomas Leitch is Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where he directs the Film Studies Program.

Leland Poague is Professor of English at Iowa State University

A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock is the most ambitious and comprehensive volume ever published on the Master of Suspense, considering the full range of his career—from his earliest contributions to other directors' silent films to his own uncompleted last effort.

Thirty chapters by the world's leading Hitchcock experts cover well-established approaches and cutting-edge scholarship, and tackle the most puzzling and complex problems in Hitchcock's films and contemporary film studies. Placing Hitchcock and his works in their cultural and intellectual contexts, contributors to the volume explore the genres with which his work is most closely associated; his relationships with his performers and other leading collaborators; the verbal and visual style of his films; Hitchcock’s rise to prominence as the quintessential Hollywood auteur; the ideological and ethical implications of his films; and the enduring legacy he left to filmmakers and audiences alike.

"A great resource for students of Hitchcock's films, craft, thought, influences, and aesthetics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-and upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, faculty." - Choice

“In my view this book is the most exciting work on Hitchcock and one which will become a prime source for Hitchcockian scholars.” – Reference Reviews

“This impressive anthology proves that there are plenty of new things to say about Hitchcock. A wide ranging and consistently intelligent compendium, it features essays on virtually every aspect of the great director's work by an array of his most astute commentators.” - James Naremore, Indiana University