After Hitchcock, Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality

AFTER HITCHCOCK TT3829.indb3829.indb i 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:03:40:03 PPMM TT3829.indb3829.indb iiii 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:04:40:04 PPMM Edited by David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer INFLUENCE, IMITATION, AND INTERTEXTUALITY University of Texas Press Austin TT3829.indb3829.indb iiiiii 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:04:40:04 PPMM Unless otherwise credited, the photographs in this volume are courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A portion of Chapter 2 appears in Crowds, Power, and Transformation in Cinema (2006), by Lesley Brill. Courtesy of Wayne State University Press. “For Ever Hitchcock: Psycho and Its Remakes” by Constantine Verevis appears in altered form in the “Authors” chapter of Film Remakes, by Constantine Verevis, courtesy of Edinburgh University Press (www.eup.ed.ac.uk). Copyright © 2006 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2006 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ᭺ϱ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication After Hitchcock : infl uence, imitation, and intertextuality / edited by David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-292-71337-6 (cl. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-292-71337-1 isbn-13: 978-0-292-71338-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-292-71338-x 1. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899— Criticism and interpretation. 2. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899—Infl uence. 3. Thrillers (Motion pictures, television, etc.)—History and criticism. I. Boyd, David, 1944 – II. Palmer, R. Barton, 1946 – pn1998.3.h58a68 2006 791.43Ј0233092—dc22 2006001351 TT3829.indb3829.indb iivv 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:05:40:05 PPMM Contents Introduction David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer 1 PART I: Psycho Recycled 13 For Ever Hitchcock: Psycho and Its Remakes Constantine Verevis 15 Hitchcockian Silence: Psycho and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs Lesley Brill 31 PART II: The Return of the Repressed 47 Shadows of Shadow of a Doubt Adam Knee 49 Psycho or Psychic? Hitchcock, Dead Again, and the Paranormal Ina Rae Hark 65 PART III: The Politics of Intertextuality 83 The Hitchcock Romance and the ’70s Paranoid Thriller R. Barton Palmer 85 Exposing the Lies of Hitchcock’s Truth Walter Metz 109 TT3829.indb3829.indb v 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:05:40:05 PPMM vi contents PART IV: Found in Translation 125 Red Blood on White Bread: Hitchcock, Chabrol, and French Cinema Richard Neupert 127 “You’re Tellin’ Me You Didn’t See”: Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Antonioni’s Blow-Up Frank P. Tomasulo 145 Melo-Thriller: Hitchcock, Genre, and Nationalism in Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz 173 “Knowing Too Much” about Hitchcock: The Genesis of the Italian Giallo Philippe Met 195 PART V: Theoretically Hitchcockian 215 Death at Work: Hitchcock’s Violence and Spectator Identifi cation Robert Sklar 217 Hitchcock and the Classical Paradigm John Belton 235 PART VI: Modus Operandi 249 How to Steal from Hitchcock Thomas M. Leitch 251 Notes on Contributors 271 Index 275 TT3829.indb3829.indb vvii 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:05:40:05 PPMM AFTER HITCHCOCK TT3829.indb3829.indb vviiii 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:05:40:05 PPMM THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Introduction David Boyd and R. Barton Palmer Hitchcock . he half century or so of Alfred Hitchcock’s career spanned crucial eras in the history of world and, especially, Hollywood cinema: from Tthe refi nement of the silents’ ability to tell feature-length stories with images in the years before the coming of sound; to the reconfi guring of fi lm style necessitated by the conversion to “talking pictures” a few years later; to the refi nements, both narrative and visual, made in the so-called Classic Hollywood text during the 1930s and 40s; to the advent in the next decade of wide-screen cinematography (which required further adjustments to “cor- porate” techniques); to the industry’s accommodation with its erstwhile rival, television; to the changes in the marketplace that followed in the wake of the weakening and eventual abandonment of the Production Code in 1966. Perhaps most important, however, Hitchcock’s impressive oeuvre of more than fi fty feature fi lms refl ects the constant (and often unexpected) evolution of cinematic subject matter and treatment, broadly conceived—both the kind of stories the cinema chose to tell and also the manner of their telling. The conventions of Victorian melodrama that held sway in his youth made way for a succession of modern forms and practices of storytelling to which Hitchcock responded in a strongly individualistic fashion. Thus Hitchcock’s continually evolving approach to fi lmmaking, strongly infl uenced at the outset by German Expressionism, came to refl ect not only several subsequent and distinct waves of realism, but also modernist and even postmodernist styles (the infl uence of the latter being quite evident in his last two projects). From his fi rst silent features made in late-1920s Britain to his last post-studio production (1976) TT3829.indb3829.indb 1 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:06:40:06 PPMM 2 introduction made in the United States, however, Hitchcock not only exemplifi ed and re- acted to changes in the cinema; he also affected the course these were to take. Of course, he was born too late (and arguably in the wrong country) to be an innovating pioneer on the model of a D. W. Griffi th or Sergei Eisenstein. Yet like them, his fi lm practice may be conceived as a dialectic that yokes enter- tainment and expressive forms of authorship. This instability of purpose and resulting rhetoric heavily marks his body of work and career. Specifi cally, any fair account of the medium’s fi rst century must acknowledge the many ways in which Hitchcock helped sustain and further fi lmmaking as a commercial enterprise—and as a respected art form as well. It is thus hardly surprising that many aspects of Hitchcock’s accomplish- ments have received a good deal of attention in recent years, as fi lm scholars have focused their attention less on the idealism and master schemes of subject positioning theory and more on delimited historical questions. Chief among such developing historicisms have been more nuanced forms of auteurist in- quiry that, avoiding the distorting excesses of neoromanticism, have attained a substantial popularity on the current critical scene, as accounts of the careers of well-known directors have proliferated. The occasion of Hitchcock’s birth centenary in 1999 saw the publication of many important works, recalling the fl urry of discussion his fi lms received from the Cahiers and Movie critics nearly a half century earlier. Of course, the fi lms, especially those made in Holly- wood, have now been the subject of a constant stream of close theoretical and textual analysis for more than three decades. Scholarly interest in Hitchcock, we can affi rm, is hardly slackening. In fact, his may well constitute the most discussed body of fi lms ever made. Because it has focused on him for the most part, however, this valuable criticism has generally acknowledged only in passing his impact on other fi lm- makers, on genres and fashions, even on the fi eld of cinema studies as an aca- demic discipline. It is an often acknowledged, but as yet largely unexamined, fact that Hitchcock’s fi lms have exerted, and continue to exert, a wider and more profound infl uence than those of any other director. One obvious sign of this has been that the term “Hitchcockian” has entered the international language of academicians and fi lm publicists alike as a common way of refer- ring to a certain kind of cinematic narrative characterized by heightened ef- fects of “suspense,” the much-debated concept that Hitchcock co-opted to describe both his designs on the spectator’s emotions and his peculiar talent for engaging them. No other director has been accorded a similar linguistic honor. How did Hitchcock come to wield the infl uence that he now does? The TT3829.indb3829.indb 2 99/27/06/27/06 33:40:06:40:06 PPMM introduction 3 short answer to this diffi cult question is that Hitchcock had achieved a posi- tion of hitherto unparalleled preeminence for a director who was not also his own main performer (as in the case of Charles Chaplin). Hitchcock’s prominence, at least in part, resulted for reasons beyond his control. Most impor- tantly, changing critical fashions made his work more highly valued, often through the unsolicited sponsorship of strategically placed critics. But much of the credit for this achievement must go to Hitchcock himself. The director-star who ceaselessly promotes himself as a brand name in order to market his fi lms and solidify his place within the industry is a common fi gure on the contemporary movie scene. The prominence achieved today by many who remain behind the camera is arguably the most obvious sign of how moviemaking has changed its public face since the studio period, when directors, by and large, were more or less invisible craftsmen. Today, the director-star, above all else, plays an important role in the marketing of fi lms, as the sophisticated are regularly guided in their viewing by the director’s name above (or immediately below) the title.

Load more