Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze (Harvard Film Studies)
William Rothman'sHitchcock: The Murderous Gazeis the best treatment of Hitchcock to date. It addresses what is unique about Hitchcock's films...[in order] to establish the centrality of Hitchcock to the art of making films...[The book] consists of detailed readings of five filmsThe Lodger,Murder!,The Thirty-Nine Steps,Shadow of a Doubt, andPsycho, illustrated with more than six hundred frame enlargements...The book rewards the reader by providing pleasures that convey, to a remarkable degree, the exhilarating experience of viewing a Hitchcock film...Most readers, I am convinced, will have the sense that Rothman has really captured Hitchcock, and that he has shown Hitchcock to be more masterly, and more profound, than they ever imagined...Rothman's book, clear, passionate, and witty, neither reduces the films it studies to a set of codes nor is itself written in code. (Paul ThomasAmerican Film)The whole book in fact is richly suggestive--perhaps more fully responsive to Hitchcock's complexities than any previous account--and it deserves to be widely discussed. (Douglas PyeJournal of American Studies)This is academic film criticism of the very highest order; the readings are inclusive and illuminating, and the writing is at once polished and congenial. (Worcester Sunday Telegram)[An] eloquent, intelligent work. (Philip FrenchTimes Literary Supplement)Rothman's approach is engagingly far from dictatorial; his readings, crammed with useful questions rather than inflexible assertions, should stimulate...Rothman's is the best desert-island reading the Hitchcock fan could wish for. (Philip StrickFilms and Filming)Rothman's study is like no other I have read of Hitchcock, or any other director for that matter...The book represents an immense labor of love and devotion. (Forsyth HardyLiterary Review)Perceptive, graceful, illuminating...As a model of how to view a movie it has few equals. (Choice)