The Hitchcock Murders [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Peter Conrad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2002

Alfred Hitchcock relished his power to frighten us and believed the shocks he administered improved our psychological health. But he could never satisfactorily explain our curiosity to see forbidden things or the perverse desire to experience anxiety and dread that made his work so popular.

In The Hitchcock Murders, Peter Conrad, one of Hitchcock's eager victims, undertakes the task on the master's behalf. At the age of thirteen, Conrad snuck into his first screening of Psycho, and he's been wary of showers and fruit cellars ever since. Thanks to Hitchcock, he's also suspicious of staircases, seagulls, and crop-dusting planes. Now he sets out to analyze the nature of Hitchcock's appeal to both himself and the millions of moviegoers for whom Hitchcock is cinema's foremost auteur. Examining Hitchcock's use of religion, morality, conscience, culpability, and literary symbols, Conrad unveils a chilling Nietzschean universe-one in which there is no God and no moral standard, where humans are petty and disposable and the neutral hand of fate can take a life in the blink of an eye. A timid, respectable man with the imagination of a psychopath, a chubby jester whose practical jokes took merciless advantage of human insecurities, Hitchcock is revealed here as the man who knew too much-about all of us.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Hitchcock brought fear home to us," observes Conrad in this sharp-witted book about the master director who made us wary of taking a shower and flocks of birds. Eschewing any specific theoretical approach to the director's films or method, Conrad spins his own personal takes on the films into a comprehensive and erudite analysis of their continuing popularity. Relying upon an encyclopedic knowledge of Hitchcock's films, Conrad is most perceptive when he weaves together their themes and images to illuminate the director's worldview for example, he suggests that murder as "social sanitation" connects the killers in Lifeboat, Shadow of a Doubt and Rope, and uses Einstein's theory of relativity to explore the repeated image of a moving train. Filled with exhaustive and fascinating background information such as a comparison of the script of The Lady Vanishes and the novel on which it's based, along with a look at how Hollywood censorship mandated changes in the film adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca Conrad's book demonstrates a firm grasp of the material and instills both awe and trust in the reader. Not hesitating to place Hitchcock in a broader intellectual and cultural landscape, he perceptively discusses how Oscar Wilde, The Brothers Karamazov and Jean Genet contributed to the intellectual climate that produced these films. The result is a bright, resourceful guide to films that have defined both public art and the collective imagination.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hitchcock's great gift as a filmmaker was his ability to tap into the primal fears and desires of moviegoers. Many of his films had serious themes, yet the director had a prankster's soul; he would send up an audience's fears as he entertained them and once confessed that he felt his darkest film, Psycho, was a comedy. Conrad (Modern Times, Modern Places), whose teenage experience of watching Psycho led to a lifelong fascination with Hitchcock's work, spurns a film-by-film analysis, opting for a "surrealistic association of ideas my own brand of cinematic cross-cutting." His theme that "terror...is the price exacted by dreams" is provocative, but the free association he employs will confuse readers unfamiliar with the body of Hitchcock's work. Other problems include nonstop and dubious name-dropping, a narrative interrupted by frequent digressions, and awkward autobiography in the opening and closing chapters. Also, his assertions about Hitchcock's lack of a moral standard may be refuted by films like Shadow of a Doubt and Lifeboat. While Conrad's admiration for Hitchcock is palpable, most libraries would be better served by Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited (LJ 9/15/89). Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1st edition (September 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571210600
• ISBN-13: 978-0571210602
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,941,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening and engrossing, July 9, 2002

By 

Curtis D. Swartzentruber "skills0" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hitchcock Murders (Hardcover)

I'm a huge fan of Hitchcock and I've read quite a bit about him. I picked up this book in London and enjoyed it immensely. I like how Conrad uses works from the entire Hitchcock canon (not just critical favorites) to illustrate the central themes of his films. The fine line between sex and death, Hitch's mistrust of authority figures and organized religion, his love/hate relationship with the idealized "Hitchcock blond", the often even more perverse nature of his favorite source material ... it's all here. There are a number of other interesting topics as well: food, music, Hitchcock's dark sense of humor and penchant for practical jokes ... well worth the read for any Hitchcock fan.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Thesis of a fanboy, October 4, 2008

By 

tierny - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitchcock Murders (Paperback)

I can't pass up a book that treats Hichcock movies substantially and attempts to unravel his puzzles and technique. This book, I should have skipped. It's a rambling, personal, thoroughly undisciplined essay by an author who isn't content until he's flitted through ten atomized, isolated readings of Hitch motifs, scenes, moments per page. Conrad defies concentration. Whatever thought flits into his mind is written down and remains as undeveloped and unsatisfying as the last fifty. If you're not interested in what Conrad is talking about in the current sentence, no worries, he'll have moved on in three or four. A reader quickly observes that the book doesn't build... has no forward momentum; Conrad isn't taking you anywhere. 350 pages about Hitchcock and you'll be damned if you can tell someone what his point was when you've finished.

Read The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Read Truffaut/Hitchcock. This is certainy the worst book I've read on Hitchcock. It has no depth, despite pretending to be a thesis.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good, in some respects, February 17, 2005

By 

Gregory N. (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hitchcock Murders (Paperback)

This book is an enjoyable enough read, especially for one who can understand Peter Conrad's intense interest in Hitchcock's films. But make no mistake: Conrad is not a film critic. This is not to denigrate him in the least. On the contrary, he is a knowledgeable, capable writer whose knowledge of literature certainly adds to the book's interest.
Still, too much of the book is devoted to pointing out what is plainly there on the screen.
As a much more fascinating and critical resource, I highly recommend reading Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Film Revisited. That book, even more than Hitchcock/Truffaut, is the book I will return to the most often for insightful discussion of these great films.