Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema

by John Orr

Overview

Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema looks at the work, influences, legacy and style of one of cinema's most famous directors. Alfred Hitchcock worked in Britain and America, in silent and sound films, and through and beyond the studio system, all the time appealing to mass audiences while employing his own distinctive style. This book examines how he was affected by German cinema, British writing, the Hays Code and his own upbringing to produce films that challenged key notions of acting, sexuality, mise-en-scène and narrative convention. John Orr contends that Hitchcock is a matrix figure who forged a new dynamics of exchange and of re-made identities in the feature film that in turn has influenced film noir, neo-noir, the French New Wave and David Lynch, as well as countless filmmakers all around the world and, indeed, continues to do so.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781904764557
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/17/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Orr is professor emeritus in the School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Cinema and Modernity, Contemporary Cinema, and The Art and Politics of Film, and coeditor of The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda and The Cinema of Roman Polanski.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema
2. Lost Identities: Hitchcock and David Hume
3. Expressive Moments: Hitchcock and Weimar Cinema
4. The Flight and the Gaze: Hitchcock and the British Connection
5. Hitchcock's Actors: Notorious, Valli and the Triptych Effect
6. Perverse Miracles: Hitchcock and the French new wave
7. Inside Out: Hitchcock, Film Noir and David Lynch
Coda: I Confess, or I'm Giving Nothing Away
Filmography
Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Murray Pomerance

John Orr writes about Alfred Hitchcock with a truly delicious virtuosity. His analysis of Hitchcock's place in twentieth-century cinema is full of vivacious observation and passionate reflection that will make any lover of Hitchcock an avid reader of this book.

— Murray Pomerance, Ryerson College, author of An Eye for Hitchcock

Tom Ryall

Another book on Hitchcock? Saying something new about Hitchcock is indeed a tall order. However, John Orr's painstaking location of the director's work in relation to the major achievements of silent cinema, to the films of Murnau, Lang and Eisenstein, together with his perceptive demonstration of the central importance of Hitchcock's work to British and American popular cinema, to European art-house directors, and to contemporary filmmakers as diverse as David Lynch, Gus Van Sant and Wong Kar Wai, is a substantial achievement. The book, grounded in a deep and comprehensive knowledge of film history as well as a detailed and subtle critical knowledge of Hitchcock's films, is an important and welcome addition to the literature on the director.

— Tom Ryall, Sheffield Hallam University, author of Alfred Hitchcock and the British Cinema

William Rothman

Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema is a Hitchcock book like no other. Bursting with fresh ideas and dazzling critical insights into individual films and the totality of the director's work, John Orr presents an ambitious, original and compelling case for Hitchcock's centrality to the history of cinema and, indeed, to the artistic and intellectual life of the twentieth century as a whole.

— William Rothman, Florida State University, author of Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze

Editorial Reviews

A lifetime's wisdom about moviemaking is evident in these pages... Essential.

Choice

A book that can't be missing from the shelves of any Hitchcock fanatic.

Film Ireland

As thrilling as its subject, [Orr's] book deserves to be as influential, too.

New Statesman - Christopher Bray

As thrilling as its subject, [Orr's] book deserves to be as influential, too.

— Christopher Bray

New Statesman