Publisher: Fayetteville Mafia Press Release Date: January 14, 2023 A Conversation with Jason Isralowitz “Hitchcock had made many films that featured wrongfully accused protagonists. In the director’s breakthrough hit, The … Continue reading Book Interview: Nothing to Fear — Alfred Hitchcock and The Wrong Men
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: November 17, 2020
Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941), I Confess (1953), Dial ‘M’ For Murder (1954), and The Wrong Man (1957) are receiving a repackaging from Warner Archives. Some will prefer to own the individual releases (which seem to still be available at this time), but one assumes that this new release will likely replace those earlier editions since it is cheaper for the studio to produce. Each disc is identical to those included in those earlier editions.
Interested parties can read more detailed information about each of the discs included in this set by clicking on the individual links below:
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Release Date: January 18, 2017
“This book brings together new work and new perspectives on the relationship between Hitchcock and Herrmann. Featuring chapters by leading scholars of Hitchcock’s work, the volume examines the working relationship between the two and the contribution that Herrmann’s work brings to Hitchcock’s idiom, as well as expanding our understanding of how music fits into that body of work. The goal of these analyses is to explore approaches to sound, music, collaborative authorship, and the distinctive contribution that Herrmann brought to Hitchcock’s films. Consequently, the book examines these key works, with particular focus on what Elisabeth Weis called ‘the extra-subjective films’—Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963)—and explores Herrmann’s palpable role in shaping the sonic and musical landscape of Hitchcock’s work, which, the volume argues, has a considerable transformative effect on how we understand Hitchcock’s authorship.
The collection examines the significance, meanings, histories, and enduring legacies of one of film history’s most important partnerships. By engaging with the collaborative work of Hitchcock and Herrmann, the chapters [or essays] in the collection examine the ways in which film directors and composers collaborate, and how this collaboration is experienced in the films themselves. In addition, the collection addresses the continued hierarchization of vision over sound in the conceptualization of cinema and readdresses this balance though the exploration of the work of these two significant figures and their work together during the 1950sand 1960s” –K.J. Donnelly and Steven Rawle (Introduction, Partners in Suspense, January 18, 2017)
As this excerpt from the book’s introduction suggests, “Partners in Suspense” is a collection of fourteen scholarly articles about the creative marriage of Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock. Although their working relationship would eventually end in divorce, their collaboration lasted over a decade and gave audiences eight films (some of which are considered to be amongst the best ever made). This is a subject that has too often been overlooked, and a book on the subject is long overdue.
The essays included cover a range of subjects with varying degrees of success. A list of the titles should help one determine the subjects discussed in its pages:
Bernard Herrmann: Hitchcock’s Secret Sharer – by: Jack Sullivan
Hitchcock, Music and the Mathematics of Editing – by: Charles Barr
The Anatomy of Aural Suspense in Rope and Vertigo – by: Kevin Clifton
The Therapeutic Power of Music in Hitchcock’s Films – by: Sidney Gottlieb
A Lacanian Take on Herrmann/Hitchcock – by: Royal S. Brown
Portentous Arrangements: Bernard Herrmann and The Man Who Knew Too Much – by: Murray Pomerance
On the Road with Hitchcock and Herrmann: Sound, Music, and the Car Journey in Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960) – by: Pasquale Iannone
A Dance to the Music of Herrmann: A Figurative Dance Suite – by: David Cooper
The Sound of The Birds – by: Richard Allen
Musical Romanticism v. The Sexual Aberrations of the Criminal Female: Marnie (1964) – by: K. J. Donnelly
The Murder of Gromek: Theme and Variations – by: Tomas Williams
Mending the Torn Curtain: A Rejected Score’s Place in a Discography – by: Gergely Hubai
The Herrmann-Hitchcock Murder Mysteries: Post-Mortem – by: William H. Rosar
How Could You Possibly be a Hitchcocko-Herrmannian? (Digitally Re-Narrativising Collaborative Authorship) – by: Steven Rawle
Perhaps the most immediate surprise when considering the topics discussed in this collection is the lack of information and analysis about Herrmann’s first collaboration with Hitchcock (The Trouble with Harry). It would seem that their first collaboration would be of special interest, and the book does provide some general information about Lyn Murray’s initial suggestion that the director work with Herrmann (including excerpts from Murray’s personal journal), but the score for The Trouble with Harry is largely ignored. What’s more, the book neglects Herrmann’s wonderful score for the The Wrong Man—which is one of their most interesting collaborations.
Those looking for a biographical account of the Hitchcock/Herrmann relationship will likely be disappointed. What these pages offer is scholarly examination of Herrmann’s music and how his scores affect the finished film. Anecdotal information is only given as a means to contextualize the theoretical analysis or to provide support to the arguments being made. The result is useful (especially to other scholars), but average cinephiles will be less enthusiastic—especially if they do not already have a rudimentary knowledge of music.
Review by: Devon Powell
Distributor: Sony Pictures Release Date: November 08, 2016 Region: Region A Length: 114 min Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC) Main Audio: 5.1 English DTS-HD Master Audio Alternate Audio: 5.1 French DTS-HD … Continue reading Offbeat Blu-ray Review: Taxi Driver – 40th Anniversary Edition
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Release Date: August 1, 2016
“It is my project here to trace a different, more devious rout taken by the surplus scrutiny that Hitchcock mobilizes in us. In contrast to the games that he is known to play with his Pavlovianly [sic] trained mass audience, I postulate a game he would be playing with that absurdly, pointlessly watchful spectator who dwells within us all, but whom, as members of a mass audience, or as critics in loyal alignment with it, we mostly put on lockdown; and whom I call the Too-Close Viewer. In this game, and for this viewer alone, Hitchcock would cultivate, alongside his manifest style with its hyper-legible images, a secret style that sows these images with radical duplicity. The type of duplicity to which this book gives emblematic pride of place is the hidden picture, in which a strongly narrativized [sic] image has been fashioned to conceal something that – if ever seen – would not enhance its coherence, but explode it. Imagine a small continuity error made on purpose, or a Hitchcock cameo fashioned so as not to be seen or a narrative image secretly doubling for a figure of speech in the manner of a charade, and you will have anticipated three key subtypes of Hitchcock’s hidden picturing. I take all such hidden pictures as sporadic but insistent marks of a perverse counter narrative in Hitchcock that for no reason – or for no good enough reason – takes the viewer out of the story and out of the social compact its telling presupposes. Into what is hard to say. Structurally, the hidden pictures resist being integrated into the narrative or any ostensible intentionality; and whatever we might say about any one of them as a species of content falls markedly short of accounting for their enigma as a recurring form of Hitchcock’s film-writing. It is as though, at the heart of the manifest style, there pulsed an irregular extra beat, the surreptitious ‘murmur’ of its undoing that only the Too-Close Viewer could apprehend…” –D.A. Miller (Hidden Hitchcock, Preview, 2016)
Miller’s thesis sounded somewhat questionable upon reading the first pages of his Preview (or introduction) chapter in Hidden Hitchcock. It felt as if the following chapters would be filled with what could only be over-reaching guess-work written in the wake of too many other questionable theories about Hitchcock’s work. Luckily, this is only partly true. There certainly are a few unseen visual anomalies in Alfred Hitchcock’s work, and there are quite a few of these mentioned in Hidden Hitchcock that are unquestionably present on the screen. (This reviewer spotted some of them before reading Miller’s text.) As a quick example, I call to the reader’s attention a certain hidden cameo that alert viewers can see during the opening train sequence of Strangers on a Train:
“…We are unlikely, therefore, to pay attention to a small detail that emerges at the very moment when the suddenly upraised camera gives Guy and Bruno their first full registration. This is the book that Guy is holding, his train reading; on its back cover is the face of Alfred Hitchcock, who is thus visible, if not actually seen, eight minutes before what we commonly take as his appearance. There is no doubt about it we get several more views of this book—the front cover as well as the back, and the spine too—and though no one has ever noticed it, I did not find it impossible to identify. It is ‘Alfred Hitchcock’s Fireside Book of Suspense,’ a collection of mystery stories, published by Simon and Schuster in 1947, that Hitchcock edited, annotated, and prefaced with an essay called ‘The Quality of Suspense…’” -D.A. Miller (Hidden Hitchcock, Hidden Pictures, 2016)
While this discovery wasn’t particularly surprising to this reviewer, having spotted Hitchcock’s appearance on this book several years prior to reading Miller’s thesis, this and a few other examples validate the possibility that some of his other discoveries could be legitimate as well. (There wasn’t time to go through the films discussed and analyze each one.) However, some of his theories as to what these Hitchcock appearances, continuity errors, and narrative images (or “charades”) actually mean could easily be disputed. The nature of film theory is that it is and will always remain theory. As a matter of fact, some of Miller’s discoveries cannot be proven to be intentional decisions made by Hitchcock. Certain continuity errors that have been brought to the reader’s attention might very easily be errors (every film has them).
It is particularly interesting that Miller has narrowed his focus to merely a handful of moments that can be found in three of the director’s films (with the exception of a moment in Murder that was analyzed in the Preview chapter):
“…Accordingly, I am at liberty to worship him in any of his fifty-two manifestations; there simply are no wrong choices. And yet, while forms of hidden picturing are lying all over the place in Hitchcock, the impetus for wanting to write on them came almost entirely from the three films I treat in this book: Strangers on a Train, Rope, and The Wrong Man. Why these films and not others? To anyone not myself, who was galvanized by it, my archive must appear, if not exactly marginal, a bit “off,” drawing on Hitchcock’s greatest period (the long 50s) by stopping just before Vertigo and the other universally acknowledged masterpieces in its wake… These films seemed to choose me; by whatever fatal attraction, they alone laid the traps I fell into with the sufficiently catalyzing thud.” –D.A. Miller (Hidden Hitchcock, Preview, 2016)
It is nice that Miller has chosen to focus on three films that deserve more attention, and this is especially true of The Wrong Man. Too little is written about this underappreciated film, and it is nice to that Miller has seen fit to include it here. There is a particular scene in this film that I look forward to reviewing in order to test one of Miller’s discoveries. It might not be essential reading for casual film viewers, but Hidden Hitchcock has the power to inspire further (and closer) viewing of Hitchcock’s work, and it is certainly worth recommending to scholars and fans for this reason alone.
Distributor: Warner Bros. Release Date: January 26, 2016 Region: Region A Length: 01:45:20 Video: 1080P (MPEG-4, AVC) Main Audio: English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio Alternate Audio: 2.0 French Dolby Digital … Continue reading Blu-ray Review: The Wrong Man
Alfred Hitchcock Master 