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Offers new and compelling perspectives on the deeply moral nature of Hitchcock's films.
In his essays and interviews, Alfred Hitchcock was guarded about substantive matters of morality, preferring instead to focus on discussions of technique. That has not, however, discouraged scholars and critics from trying to work out what his films imply about such moral matters as honesty, fidelity, jealousy, courage, love, and loyalty. Through discussions and analyses of such films as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Frenzy, the contributors to this book strive to throw light on the way Hitchcock depicts a moral-if not amoral or immoral-world. Drawing on perspectives from film studies, philosophy, literature, and other disciplines, they offer new and compelling interpretations of the filmmaker's moral gaze and the inflection point it provides for modern cinema.
"This is an indispensable contribution to Hitchcock studies … Highly recommended." — CHOICE
"…a compelling collection of 15 essays." — PopMatters
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
R. Barton Palmer and Steven M. Sanders
Skepticism
1. Jealousy and Trust in The Lodger
Graham Petrie
2. Fun with Suspicion
Thomas Leitch
3. Heroic Satans and Other Hitchcockian Heresies
Nick Haeffner
4. "Guilt, Confession, and... Then What?": The Paradine Case and Under Capricorn
Brian McFarlane
5. The Forgotten Cigarette Lighter and Other Moral Accidents in Strangers on a Train
George Toles
Immorality
6. Hitchcock’s Immoralists
Steven M. Sanders
7. Hitchcock the Amoralist: Rear Window and the Pleasures and Dangers of Looking
Sidney Gottlieb
8. Voyeurism Revisited
Richard Allen
Moralizing
9. Alfred Hitchcock as Moralist
Murray Pomerance
10. The Deepening Moralism of The Wrong Man
R. Barton Palmer
11. Hitchcock and the Philosophical End of Film
Jerold J. Abrams
Moral Acts
12. The Dread of Ascent: The Moral and Spiritual Topography of Vertigo
Alan Woolfolk
13. The Philosophy of Marriage in North by Northwest
Jennifer L. Jenkins
14. "The Loyalty of an Eel": Issues of Political, Personal, and Professional Morality in (and around) Torn Curtain
Neil Sinyard
15. Hobbes, Hume, and Hitchcock: The Case of Frenzy
Homer B. Pettey
Bibliography
Alfred Hitchcock Selected Filmography
Contributors
Index