Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze

By William Rothman

Book Overview

An expanded edition of a classic work of film criticism, with a provocative and eloquent new chapter on Marnie, Hitchcock's most heartfelt-and most controversial-film.

First published in 1982, William Rothman's Hitchcock is a classic work of film criticism. Written in an engaging style that is philosophically sophisticated yet free of jargon, and using over nine hundred images from the films to illustrate and back up its critical claims, the book follows six different Hitchcock films as they unfold, moment by moment, from first shot to last.

In addition to a thoughtful new preface and the original readings of The Lodger (1927), Murder (1930), The 39 Steps (1935), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and Psycho (1960), this expanded edition includes a groundbreaking new chapter-now the book's longest-on Marnie (1964), Hitchcock's most heartfelt yet most controversial film. Hitchcock never tired of quoting Oscar Wilde's line, "And all men kill the thing they love." Dark moods therefore prevail in the five original chapters, culminating in the reading of Psycho, but in demonstrating how Marnie overcomes, or transcends, the murderous aspect of Hitchcock's art, this new chapter balances the scales and gives an important new dimension to the book.

With exemplary precision, Hitchcock, Second Edition shows how Hitchcock films express, cinematically, serious thoughts about such matters as the nature and relationships of love, murder, sexuality, marriage, and theater-and about their own medium. In so doing, it keeps faith with the idea that Hitchcock was a master, perhaps the master, of what he called the "art of pure cinema." However, insofar as it investigates philosophically the conditions of authorship in the medium of film, it is an auteurist study unlike any other. By attending to the films themselves and to the ways we experience them, rather than allowing some theory to dictate what to say about them, the book proves the fruitfulness of an approach that is open and responsive to the ways serious films are capable of teaching us how to think seriously about them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1438443161
• ISBN13: 9781438443164
• Release Date: August 2012
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 501 Pages
• Weight: 2.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.1" x 10.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

An excellent look into Hitchcock's films.

This book has possibly the best analysis of Hitchcock's "Psycho" available. This is a microscopic frame by frame examination of 5 or so of the master's films. All (with the exception of "Psycho") were made early in Hitch's career ("The Lodger" is a silent film) and are British films (ie made in England vice America). I won't really comment on the analysis of the early works (as I have not seen those films), but the analysis of Psycho deserves mention. This analysis is absolutely devastating. I do not mean this in a negative way, I mean to say that when you read it, you will see Hitchcock films as you once did. According to Rothman, Psycho is not only a film about the personal problems people have (it's not just a shower scene), it is a film concerned with: a)Hitchcock's opinion of his art, what he has done and will do, b)an examination of life and art, c)the role of active participation an audience undertakes in watching a film, and d)that Norman Bates is a helluva lot crazier than we would ever have believed possible, and far more than I have space to write. Rothman makes some outrageous claims, but damn, does he support them well! He convinced me. The book is filled with frame by frame pictures to accompany the analysis. Highly recommended for students of film and Hitchcock fans.