Scholarly Introductions

Sample Guidelines

Criteria for a Scholarly Introduction (from a University Press)

Sample Scholarly Intros

Introduction to Hitchcock's Psycho

Intro to an online literary resource

Select Hitchcock Bibliography

The following bibliography is organized by the three different approaches we've discussed in class: the auteur approach, which claims that a film is best understood by the unique stylistic stamp left by its director; the genre approach, which analyzes a film based on its adherence to or departure from the rules and conventions of genre; and the focus on the film's context, whether that means the history of the film itself (its producer, production company, writers) or the historical events coinciding with the film's production (WWII, the Cold War, postwar economic boom).  The list concludes with several generalist approaches to Hitchcock.

Auteur

Reidar Due, “Hitchcock’s Innocence Plot” Film Studies no. 4 (Summer 2004): 48-57.

Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, Hitchcock Style

Thomas Leitch, Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games

William Rothman, The “I” of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics (includes essays “The Villain in Hitchcock,” and “Thoughts on Hitchcock’s Authorship”)

Susan Smith, “The Spatial World of Hitchcock’s Films: The Point-of-View Shot, the Camera, and ‘Intrarealism’” Cineaction no. 50 (September 1999): 2-15.

Susan Smith, Hitchcock: Suspense, Humour, and Tone

Marc Raymond Strauss, Hitchcock Nonetheless: The Master’s Touch in His Least Celebrated Films

Francois Truffaut, “Skeleton Keys” Film Culture no. 32 (Spring 1964): 63-7

(famous analysis of doubling in Shadow of a Doubt)

Genre

Lesley Brill, The Hitchcock Romance: Romance and Irony in Hitchcock’s Films

William Hare, Hitchcock and the Methods of Suspense

Thomas Hemmeter, “Hitchcock’s Melodramatic Silence” Journal of Film and Video vol. 48, no. 1-2 (Spring 1996): 32-40.

James Naremore, “Hitchcock at the Margins of Noir” in a book entitled Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays, edited by Richard Allen and S. Ishii-Gonzales

Dominique Sipiere, “What Hitchcock Taught Us about Whodunits” in Crime Fictions: Subverted Codes and New Structures, ed. Gallix and Guignery

Context

Hitch and his Collaborators

Dan Auiler, Hitchcock’s Notebooks

Joel Finler, Hitchcock in Hollywood

Bill Krohn, Hitchcock at Work

Hitch and Modern Art (ie, Expressionism)

Notorious: Alfred Hitchcock and Contemporary Art, ed. Brougher et al.

Hitchcock and Art: Fatal Coincidences, ed. Paini

Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film, ed. Schmenner

Walter Metz, “Modernity and the Crisis in Truth: Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang” in Cinema and Modernity, ed. Murray Pomerance

Historical Context

Thomas Leitch, “It’s the Cold War, Stupid: An Obvious History of the Political Hitchcock” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1 (1999): 3-15.

Robin Wood, “Hitchcock and Fascism” Hitchcock Annual no. 13 (2004-5): 25-63.

Influential General Studies of Hitch

Peter Conrad, The Hitchcock Murders

Jean Douchet, Hitchcock

Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock: The First Fourty-Four Films

Donald Spoto, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of his Motion Pictures