- Paperback: 136 pages
- Publisher: Longman; 1 edition (14 July 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0582437385
- ISBN-13: 978-0582437388
- Product Dimensions: 23.7 x 16 x 0.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 958,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Nicholas Haeffner provides a comprehensive introduction to Alfred Hitchcock’s major British and Hollywood films, navigating the audience through a wealth of critical commentaries. One of the acknowledged giants of film, Hitchcock’s prolific half-century career spanned the silent and sound eras and resulted in 52 films of which Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) are now seen as classics within suspense, melodrama and horror genres.
From the Back Cover
Nicholas Haeffner provides a comprehensive introduction to Alfred Hitchcock's major British and Hollywood films and usefully navigates the reader through a wealth of critical commentaries. One of the acknowledged giants of film, Hitchcock's prolific half-century career spanned the silent and sound eras and resulted in 53 films of which Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) are now seen as classics within the suspense, melodrama and horror genres. In contrast to previous works, which have attempted to get inside Hitchcock’s mind and psychoanalyse his films, this book takes a more materialist stance. As Haeffner makes clear, Hitchcock was simultaneously a professional film maker working as part of a team in the film factories of Hollywood, a media celebrity, and an aspiring artist gifted with considerable entrepreneurial flair for marketing himself and his films. The book makes a case for locating the director’s remarkable body of work within traditions of highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow culture, appealing to different audience constituencies in a calculated strategy. The book upholds the case for taking Hitchcock's work seriously and challenges his popular reputation as a misogynist through detailed analyses of his most controversial films. Contents
- Background
- Hitchcock's heritage
- Authorship and reputation
- Design: image, sound and silence
- Realism and The Wrong Man
- Hitchcock and women
- The uses and abuses of psychoanalysis
- Audiences and identification
- Hitchcock's legacy: Psycho and after
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Insights,
By
This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors) (Paperback)
In this engaging and insightful study, Nicholas Haeffner explores Hitchcock's remarkable career and offers re-readings of his films which situate them in relation to a range of social, political and artistic contexts. Challenging previous studies which read Hitchcock's work predominantly through psychoanalysis, Haeffner examines the films in relation to cultural traditions, class and gender dynamics, and the systems and structures of the film industry itself.
In the initial chapters of the book, Haeffner considers Hitchcock's position as both artist and businessman, and emphasises his relentless self-promotion throughout his career. Using wide-ranging examples as well as quotes from Hitchcock himself taken from articles and reviews, Haeffner examines the director's challenges to traditional social mores, his commitment to experimentation and innovation, and his nurturing of the tastes of British and American audiences. A variety of key influences on Hitchcock are considered - including melodrama, the thriller, gothic, romance, expressionism and surrealism - and the visual and verbal artistry of his works is explored through detailed analysis of particular scenes. Subsequent chapters focus on specific areas of Hitchcock's work and develop or challenge standard views and critical approaches. Chapter Four, for example, demonstrates how Hitchcock engaged not only with the traditions of gothic and romance for which he arguably most famous, but the conventions of realism as well, and particularly in The Wrong Man (1957), "the most self-consciously realist of all Hitchcock's films" (p. 61). Chapter Five complicates previous readings of Hitchcock's supposed misogyny through detailed consideration of the construction of women in his work. And Chapter Six similarly extends and complicates more standard Freudian readings of the films through an examination of the problems and potential of psychoanalytic analysis. A very interesting chapter on Hitchcock's relations with, and manipulation of, his audiences is then followed by a final chapter exploring the genesis, reception and appropriation of Psycho (1960), one of the most enduring of Hitchcock's works and a film which, in Haeffner's words, "remains a testimony to his skills as an engineer of human unease and terror" (p. 111). Overall, then, this is an accessible, fascinating and elegantly written study which provides many insightful readings and which sends the reader back to the films with renewed appreciation. Certainly it has much to offer students, scholars and fans of Hitchcock as well as those working in the areas of film studies and cultural studies more generally.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fresh Take on Hitchcock,
By Leonard Quart (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors) (Paperback)
There have been innumerable critical books written about Alfred Hitchcock. Some of them have been dim and shallow, others opaque and jargon-written, and still others like Nick Haeffner's book are critically penetrating,knowlegeable, and written with consummate clarity.Haeffner emphasizes that Hitchcock's work needs to be "situated within the industrial imperatives and constraints that govern the film industry," and that they also need to be placed in a cultural context. Reading widely and astutely in the critical literature, Haeffner writes about how Hitchcock combined cultural respectabilty and sensationalism to help develop a British mifddlebrow cinema in such films as The 39 Steps. And how he successfully merged the roles of artist and showman to simultaneously garner recognition among intellectuals and appeal to a mass audience. Haeffner's book is comprehensive and concise. He deals with subjects like: Hitchcock and women; his use of sound and silence, and the nature of audience response to the films. The book is unique for being thoroughly immersed in the academic literature, and accessible to the educated, non-specialist reader. It's a fine book.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
