Hitchcock

<p><b>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.</b></p><p>First published in 1982 William Rothman's <i>Hitchcock</i> 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.</p><p>In addition to a thoughtful new preface and the original readings of <i>The Lodger</i> (1927) <i>Murder!</i> (1930) <i>The 39 Steps</i> (1935) <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> (1943) and <i>Psycho</i> (1960) this expanded edition includes a groundbreaking new chapter-now the book's longest-on <i>Marnie</i> (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 <i>Psycho</i> but in demonstrating how <i>Marnie</i> 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.</p><p>With exemplary precision <i>Hitchcock Second Edition</i> 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 <i>the</i> master of what he called the art of pure cinema. However insofar as it investigates philosophically the <i>conditions</i> 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.</p>