Alfred Hitchcock: The Legacy of Victorianism (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A valuable contribution to Hitchcock studies.-- Choice" -- Choice

"Cohen knows her movies and moviemaking techniques.... This is a fun, learned, and provocative book, especially for Hitchcock buffs.-- Rapport" -- Rapport

"A valuable contribution to Hitchcock studies.-- Choice" -- Choice

"Cohen knows her movies and moviemaking techniques.... This is a fun, learned, and provocative book, especially for Hitchcock buffs.-- Rapport" -- Rapport

Product Description

" This provocative study traces Alfred Hitchock's long directorial career from Victorianism to postmodernism. Paul Cohen considers a number of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films -- Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho -- as well as some of his less well-known ones -- Rope, the Wrong Man, Topaz -- and makes connections between his evolution as a filmmaker and trends in the larger society. Drawing on a number of methodologies including feminism, psychoanalysis, and family systems, the author provides an insightful look at the paradox of a Victorian era. His career, she argues, can be seen as an attempt to balance "the two faces of Victorianism": a masculine legacy of law and hierarchy and a feminine legacy of feeling and imagination. Also central is the Victorian model of the nuclear family and its permutations, especially the father-daughter dyad. Cohen postulates a fundamental dynamic in Hitchcock's films, what she call a "daughter's effect," and relates it to the social role of the family as an institution and to Hitchcock's own relationship with his daughter, Patricia, who appeared in three of his films. Cohen argues that Hitchcock's films reflect his Victorian legacy and serve as a map for ideological trends. She charts his development from his British period through his classic Hollywood years into his later phase, tracing a conceptual evolution that corresponds to an evolution in cultural identity -- one that builds on a Victorian inheritance and ultimately discards it.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (July 20, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813108500
• ISBN-13: 978-0813108506
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,291,169 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent book -- lousy title, April 17, 2000

By	Joseph W. Smith III (Montoursville, PA United States) - See all my reviews

I thought this book would be an examination of how Hitch had handled various Victorian issues, esp. sexual repression and upper-class elitism. Actually, that's not what the book is about at all. Cohen is interested only in the switch from what she calls a "subjective narrative" -- literary fiction of the Victorian age -- to film narrative of the modern era. She claims literary fiction in the 1800s had developed a female-centered subjectivity and that cinema came along to "re-orient" the public to a male-focused sensibility. She hammers this over and over again throughout her book, and spends way too much time examining gender roles, until you could swear there was nothing else that mattered about Hitchcock's films. Of course, this is always the problem with any tightly-focused scholarly analysis ("When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"); so it's not terribly objectionable, and fortunately the book does have quite a number of interesting insights, esp. about Hitch's relationship with his daughter and the roles he cast her in as those roles reflect the development of their father-daughter dynamic. While I disagree with much of what Cohen says, I found her book a catalyst to some very interesting thinking about Hitch. In particular, she has quite a fascinating perspective on his last films, which are often viewed as failures; she thinks they're just exericses in post-modernism. Whatever you think about the book, I continue to be amazed at how many people feel compelled to ransack Hitchcock's work; it's as though no serious film fan has any choice but to address what he did. This book is another interesting step in the process. . . .