Alfred Hitchcock

Sidney Gottlieb

Reputations come and go, but Alfred Hitchcock's has remained solidly in place in the pantheon of the masters of the cinema. Although he is well-known for his interviews, what is less-known is that he wrote extensively about the cinema during the course of his life. These writings are gathered together for the first time in this book. His essays are thoughtful meditations on film art in general, as well as attempts to define his own art in particular, expressed in a manner that is entertaining and full of the evident delight he took in film-making. The writings focus directly on his life, his films and his film practice. The book is essential to anyone interested in Hitchcock's work.

Selected Writings and Interviews

Hitchcock on Hitchcock

Jonathan F. S. Post

Reflections and Reassessments

George Herbert in the Nineties

James N. Gilmore

Through his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles's multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles's work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles's work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totality illuminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.

Texts and Contexts

Orson Welles in Focus

T. A. Klinefelter

Sidney Speil

Survey of Suitability of Domestic Talcs for High-frequency Insulators

Horton Andrew

Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City

Donal Martin

When Richard Schickel stated unequivocally in 1972 that "We're living in a Hitchcock world, all right", he did so without even mentioning the film that now stands at the top of the Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll: Vertigo. That omission needs to be redressed when we think about the Hitchcock world we live in now. Haunted by Vertigo: Hitchcock's Masterpiece Then and Now gathers essays that offer a variety of approaches to what many consider to be Hitchcock's signature film, one that shows him operating at full strength as a cinematic artist portraying some of the defining elements of modern life: romantic exhilaration and anxiety, the attractiveness and elusiveness of love, and the interpenetration of pain, pleasure, life, and death in our psyche and our culture. The pieces in this volume explore numerous aspects of how, broadly speaking, Vertigo is about characters haunted by memories and desires; how the film itself is haunted by numerous literary and cinematic fore- bearers; and how it continues to haunt not only filmmakers but artists working in other media as well. Essays that concentrate on formative or interpretive contexts of the film, including Greek mythology, early German cinema, film noir, an ensemble of (mostly) French writers and filmmakers, andmodern and postmodern art are complemented by others that present close readings of hidden details in the film, its use of multiple gazes that underscore its meaning and drama, the darker sides of even gestures of love and hospitality, and how the film embodies Hitchcock's "late style". Taken together the essays in the volume reinforce how Vertigo is, like the majestic trees visited by the two main characters in the film, sempervirens - an enduring masterpiece of then, now, and, we can safely say, the future.

Hitchcock's Masterpiece Then and Now

Haunted by Vertigo

Sidney Gottlieb

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