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Can Hitchcock Be Saved from Hitchcock Studies?

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Can Hitchcock Be Saved from Hitchcock Studies? since then, nol to mention scores of iK•^^• articles. At any rate, a quick count of books Can Hitchcock be Saved on Hitchcock currently available for sale on Amazon.com indicates eighty-seven new and old book titles. from Hitchcock Studies? Hooks on Hitchcock sell. For the past by John Belton twenty-Hve years, since the heyday of high auleuihm, university and trade presses have taken a beating on studies of film directors. But Hitchcock, partly because of his status as a cultural icon and partly because college film courses are regularly devoted to his work, has endured as a sitbiect for popular biographies and scholarly monographs. Robin Wood's hook, Hitchcock's l-ilins, sub- sequently retilled Hitchcock's Tihns Revisited, is perhaps the best exatnple of Hitchcock's enduring popularity. Originally published (in a green cover edition) by Zwemmcr in 1965, it was reissued in 1969 (in a yellow cover edition that included a chapter on Torn Curtain). A thirii edition came out in 1977 with a "Retiospective" on the earlier editions. In 1989, Columbia University Press reprinted it along with about 200 pages of new material. That edition was revised yet again in 2002 with a new forty-page preface and a new essay on Mamie. Wood's book holds a very special place in llnglish-language scholarship on Hitch- cock, being nol only {me of the first such books but also one of the best. At the same time, its various revisions document crucial shifts in films studies as a discipline and provide an important portrait of Hitch- cock's role, as a figure of study, in the devel- opment of critical paradigms from early (i/i/fHcism, to psychoanalysis, feminism, semiotics (of a sort), and queer studies. There are various ways of accounting for the proliferation of books and essays on Hitchcock. The most obvious explanation would seem to be that Hitchcock's oeuvre merits such attention, Sidney Ciottlieb, coeditor of a journal devoted exclusively to Hitchcock (The Hitchcock Annual) and of a recent anthology of essays from that journal, is one of the few scholars to address the phe- s Robert Kapsis ha.s noted in Hitch- cock himself and his attempt to control his nomenon of "Hitchcock Studies." He cock: The Making of a Reputation, construction as a celebrity-entertainer-artist observes that Hitchcock has been "val- A Alfred Hitchcock alway.s courted the in the media. But Hitchcock has been dead orized," "institutionalized," "commodified," press. From the early yeans in England work- for twenty-three years now. At ihe time of and "proliferated" as a topic of study. ing for Michael Balcon at Ciainsborough to his death, according to Jane Sloan's Alfred Although he considers the Hitchcock Indus- his final years in Hollywood working for Hitcheock: A Guide to References and Sources try to be a "mixed blessing," the fact is that Lew Wasserman at Universal, Hitchcock (1995), there were already over 540 articles Hitchcock, like Shakespeare, is a major artist attempted to produce and direct critical and books on Hitchcock, including a hand- in an art form—the cinema—that has response to himself and to his work. One of ful of essays by Hitchcock himself, numer- becotne the major artistic medium of the Hitchcock's favorite screenwriters, Charles ous interviews with him, and other pieces last century. To ensure the continued viabil- Bennett, told stories of Hitchct)ck spending \spawncd' by ihe director's efforts al gener- ity of Hitchcock Studies, Cottlieb then his entire weekly salary on elaborate (self-) ating publicity. We can, perhaps, 'blame' makes a series of recommendations de- promotional parties for London's film crit- Hitchcock for some of this material. signed to prevent the field from becoming ics back in the early iy3()s. Hitchcock lUu he is nol to be held entirely responsi- yet anolher instance of cultural commoditl- remained actively engaged in the publicity ble for whal happened after iiis death. Lroiii cation, instrunientali^ation, and reiflcation. for and promoliun of his films throughout then (April 28, 1980) to his centennial in One of his recommendations could be .said his career, personally conducting national 1999, more than sixty-four new books and to describe the best of recent work on press tours. 371 new critical essays were published. Hitchcock; it involves "de-centering" Hitch- It is possible, in other words, to trace the C'livcn that the 'Hitchcock Industry' really cock—that is, exploring the various "con- 'Hitchcock Indtistry,' the proHfciation of took off during the lODth anniversary of his texts of his work," "...his collaborators, his essays, articles, trade press, a)id academic birth (1999), one could guess that another historical milieu..." press books on Hitchcock, back to Hitch- tweniy-or-so books had been published A more cynical commentary on llitch- 16 CINEASTE, Fall 2003 cock Studies comt's from Peter Conrad, written hetween 1969 and 1979, as well as a author of The Hitchcock Murders. Conrad Books Reviewed in This Article 1980 piece on D. W. Griffith's The Lonedale refers to scholarly work on Hitchcock as Vertigo Operator. Wood prefaces the new edition of "bogus cerebration, a means of securing aca- by Charles Barr. London: British Film Institute his book with an extended discussion of his demic jobs." To some extent, the rise of (Distributed in the U.S. by University of Califor- life as a critic, focussing on his own intellec- Hitchcock Studies mirrors the rise of filtn nia Press), 2002. 96 pp., illus- Paperback: $12.95. tual, sexual, and ideological development studies as an academic discipline. This The Analysis of Film from his first essay on Hitchcock's Psyeho explanation iy complicated, I would argue, by Raymond liellocir. Edilcd by Conslana* Pen- for Cahiers du cinema in 1960 to his most by the appropriation of Him as a topic of ley. Bluominglon and Indiali.ipolis, IN: Indiana recent work on Mamie, published in the academic study by scholars (like Conrad) University Press, 2002. 328 pp., illas. Canadian journal CineAction in 1999. The who know little or nothing about film itself. Hardcover: S49.95 and Paperback: $19.95. new material is not what makes this book As David Bordwcll has suggested, Hitchcock the best book on Hitchcock, but, for those is the perfect object of study for English pro- The Hollywood I Knew: interested in Wood as a critic, this revision fessors {see Jotiathan Freedman and Richard A Memoir, 1916-1988 provides a certain sense of closure to the by Herbert Coleman. I.anham, MD: Scarecrow Miilington's Hitchcock's America, 1999). Press, 200.1. 416 pp., illus. Hardcover: $39.95. Wood-Hitchcock relationship. Hitchcock's films enjoy a certain accessibili- Wood's initial readings of seven films ty through their stylistic and thematic obvi- The Hitchcock Murders (Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, ousness that is not the case for more 'diffi- by Peter Conrad. London: Faber and Faber, North by Northwest, Psyeho,The Birds, and cult' filmmakers such as Robert Bresson, 2002, 368 pp., illus. Hardcover: $25.00 Mamie) integrate sensitive analyses of nar- and Paperback: 515.00. Carl Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Edward Yang, rative patterns and esthetic choices with the Howard Hawks, Michael Powell, Otto Pre- Writing with Hitchcock: elaboration of several interreiated strands of minger, and |ohn Stahl (who still has no The Collaboration of Alfred themes addressing moral development, book devoted to his work). Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes including the progression of Hitchcock's Conrad's assault on the Mitchcock by Stephen DeRosa. London: Faber and Faber, central characters from a state of mental, Industry is essentially an attack on the acad- 2001. 326 pp., illus. Paperback: $15,00. emolional, moral, or physical paralysis e m i c i 7 a t i o n of f i I in studies, which is toward some iorm of therapy or cure ("a undouhtedly a factor that has contrihuted to A Long Hard Look at Psycho character is cured of some weakness or by Raymond Hurgnal. London: Briiish f'ilm obsession by indulging it and living through the growth of scholarship on Hitchcock. Ray Institnte (Distributed in the U.S. by University Durgnat's new book on Hitchcock, A Long of California Press), 2002. 250 pp., iilus. ihe consequences"). Through identification Hard Look at Psycho (BFl, 2002), expresses a Hardcover: $63.00 and Paperback: $19.95. with the hero/ine, the audience undergoes a similar skepticism toward certain forms of similar process of cathartic redemption. At contemporary academic criticism, especially Footsteps in the Fog: the same time, Wood engaged in a kind of psychoanalysis, feminism, and structural- Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco protostructuralJsm, tracing the moral vicis- ism. Durgnat is contemptnons of what he by leff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal. situdes of Hitchcock's characters within a Introduclion by Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell. refers to as "Brand X feminists" and dis- Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2002. world of extremes—order and chaos, ego misses psychoanalysis, arguing that "much 288 pp., illus. Paperback: $24.95. and id, innocence and guilt, past and pre- Freudian theory tends to pansexualist sent, free will and predetermination, sanity reductionism" (i.e., Freudians tend to The Encyclopedia and insanity, and reality and faulasy/dream. explain everything in sexual terms). He does of Alfred Hitchcock For Wood, the common thread that ran not subscribe to theories of the gaze, the by 'I homas Leitcb. Foreword by Ciene D. Pbillips. throughout the films was the value ot dominance of the scopic drive, or notions New York: Checkmark Rooks (a division of human relationships in navigating these Facts on File, Inc.), 2002.
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