Customer Reviews

The Hitchcock Murders

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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.

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.

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.

If you're a big Hitchcock fan -- and if you've bothered to even reach this review, then you MUST be -- then go on and buy this book. It is far from perfect, but it's still one of the better books on the Master that I've read. Most of the criticism is insightful, and Conrad finds plenty of things in the movies that no other critic (at least none I've read) has written about. Perhaps most useful of all, Conrad has read all of the source material (novels, plays, short stories, etc.) that Hitchcock adapted for his films, and goes into detail about them at various points. This is interesting info, and again, not really something other Hitchcock critics have done.

Here's the problem: Conrad goes on frequent digressions away from discussing the actual movies, or even their source material, and toward discussing other peoples' movies, or artists, or novelists, or philosophers, so on and so forth. The idea, I think, is to place Hitchcock in a frame of reference so as to come to some sort of a conclusion on how to judge him as an artist. And that is a noble goal. However, the digressions are too frequent, too long, and too convenient; many of the examples reek of having been dug up to support a point Conrad wanted to make, rather than being actually appropriate to a discussion of Hitchcock.

Still, this is a valuable addition to the ever-growing canon of works investigating cinema's most profoundly excellent director. Go ahead and buy it; just don't expect it to be perfect.

Peter Conrad has long loved the films of Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Ever since he was a boy who skipped school to peer in wonder at the master filmmakers Psycho he has studied the works of Hitch.
Conrad's book is fascinating as he delineates the major themes and preoccupations (and yes-hangups!) of the Cockney genius. The author explores such subjects as Hitch's thoughts on music, food, religion, authority figures, sex and art.
I will use this book more than the Truffaut interviews as I view again and again the great films of the Master of Suspense.
Well recommended.