or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
18 used & new from £7.50
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors)
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors) (Paperback)

by Dr Nicholas Haeffner (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £17.99
Price: £17.09 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £0.90 (5%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 weeks.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

11 new from £10.68 7 used from £7.50

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Photography and Cinema (Exposures)

Photography and Cinema (Exposures)

by David Campany
£9.37
Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies

Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies

by Donald Spoto
3.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £17.00
Hitchcock's Motifs (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)

Hitchcock's Motifs (Amsterdam University Press - Film Culture in Transition)

by Michael Walker
£25.00
Of Time And The City [DVD] [2008]

Of Time And The City [DVD] [2008]

DVD ~ Tim Pollard
4.1 out of 5 stars (27)  £11.98
In Bruges [DVD] [2008]

In Bruges [DVD] [2008]

DVD ~ Colin Farrell
4.1 out of 5 stars (94)  £2.98
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 136 pages
  • Publisher: Longman (14 Jul 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0582437385
  • ISBN-13: 978-0582437388
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.2 x 1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 808,619 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

  • See Complete Table of Contents

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)
   Rare Hitchcock Films opens new browser window
www.MoviesUnlimited.com  -  The Movie Collector's Website! 1000s of titles not found elsewhere 
   And directors opens new browser window
SHOP.COM  -  Shop for And directors on SHOP.COM Find Exceptional Value Every Day! 
   Director opens new browser window
www.Ask.com/Director  -  Find Director Search for Director 
  
 

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
 Nicholas Haeffner is currently Senior Lecturer in Communications, London Metropolitan University and Visiting Professor at Boston University.

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 organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors)
97% buy the item featured on this page:
Alfred Hitchcock (On Directors) 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
£17.09
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
3% buy
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light 5.0 out of 5 stars (4)
£9.98
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 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, 22 Jun 2006
By Simon Avery (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fresh Take on Hitchcock, 3 Feb 2006
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.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject



















i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.