Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery has been described as "a kind of Rear Window for retirees." As this quote suggests, an analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's methodical use of comedy in his films is past due. One of Turner Classic Movies' on-screen scholars for their summer 2017 online Hitchcock class, the author grew tired of misleading throwaway references to the director's "comic relief." This book examines what should be obvious: Hitchcock systematically incorporated assorted types of comedy--black humor, parody, farce/screwball comedy and romantic comedy--in his films to entertain his audience with "comic" thrillers.

Susan Smith's treatment of the works of the most subtle of all film-makers analyses the key elements of suspense, humour and tone across the whole of the director's career. Arguing that all three are central to our viewing experience, the book demonstrates how Hitchcock's masterly integration of those elements is the key to his success as a film-maker. Examining in detail such films as Sabotage, Notorious, Rear Window, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope and The Birds, amongst many others, the book discusses the idea of the director as saboteur and the importance of 'the avoidance of cliché' in Hitchcock's narrative.

Iconic, groundbreaking interviews of Alfred Hitchcock by film critic François Truffaut—providing insight into the cinematic method, the history of film, and one of the greatest directors of all time. In Hitchcock, film critic François Truffaut presents fifty hours of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock about the whole of his vast directorial career, from his silent movies in Great Britain to his color films in Hollywood. The result is a portrait of one of the greatest directors the world has ever known, an all-round specialist who masterminded everything, from the screenplay and the photography to the editing and the soundtrack. Hitchcock discusses the inspiration behind his films and the art of creating fear and suspense, as well as giving strikingly honest assessments of his achievements and failures, his doubts and hopes. This peek into the brain of one of cinema’s greats is a must-read for all film aficionados.

"Hitchcock and Humor: a Study in Collaborative Authorship" presents three case studies that examine how Hitchcock's humor, a critical component of his touch, fluctuates and varies in accordance with his collaborators and his creative control. The first collaboration addressed involves Hitchcock's dealings with producer David O Selznick on both Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound (1945). By tracing each film through its initial treatments to its final screenplay, the each man's individual contribution comes to light and explains why Rebecca lacks the humor required for the full Hitchcock touch whereas Spellbound does provide comic moments. Under Selznick, Hitchcock first established a working relationship with actor Cary Grant. The two would continue to collaborate as the years went on and made four films together in all: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). In each subsequent film Hitchcock's methods of humor mesh more with Grant's screwball persona culminating in a Hitchcock classic full of funny moments. Along with Hitchcock's wit and Grant's physical comedy, North by Northwest owes a debt of gratitude to its screenwriter Ernest Lehman who created the original script simply out of sketches of characters and moments. The third case study examines the humor in Frenzy (1972). While Hitchcock's recent films had failed to reproduce the Hitchcock touch for an uncharacteristic lack of humor, Frenzy is laced with tongue-in-cheek action. The story was based on Arthur La Bern's novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square (1972) and was adapted to the screen by playwright Anthony Shaffer to create what many call Hitchcock's return to form. These case studies reveal that the inclusion of humor in Hitchcock's films comes about when Hitchcock has the freedom away from the pressures of the studio and studio heads to assert his creative control with the collaborators and films of his choosing, preferably collaborators whose aesthetics compliment his own, and preferably films whose genre allows for generous tongue-in-cheek.

Throughout his career, Alfred Hitchcock had to contend with a wide variety of censors attuned to the slightest suggestion of sexual innuendo, undue violence, toilet humor, religious disrespect, and all forms of indecency, real or imagined. From 1934 to 1968, the Motion Picture Production Code Office controlled the content and final cut on all films made and distributed in the United States. During their review of Hitchcock's films, the censors demanded an average of 22.5 changes, ranging from the mundane to the mind-boggling, on each of his American films. In his award-winning Hitchcock and the Censors, author John Billheimer traces the forces that led to the Production Code and describes Hitchcock's interactions with code officials on a film-by-film basis as he fought to protect his creations, bargaining with code reviewers and sidestepping censorship to produce a lifetime of memorable films. Despite the often-arbitrary decisions of the code board, Hitchcock still managed to push the boundaries of sex and violence permitted in films by charming—and occasionally tricking—the censors, and by swapping off bits of dialogue, plot points, and individual shots (some of which had been deliberately inserted as trading chips) to protect cherished scenes and images. By examining Hitchcock's priorities in dealing with the censors, this work highlights the director's theories of suspense as well as his magician-like touch when negotiating with code officials.

IT'S ONLY A MOVIE is as close to an autobiography by Alfred Hitchcock that you could ever have. Drawn from years of interviews with her subject, his friends and the actors who worked with him on such classics as THE BIRDS, PSYCHO and REAR VIEW WINDOW, Charlotte Chandler has created a rich, complex, affectionate and honest picture of the man and his milieu. This is Hitchcock in his own voice and through the eyes of those who knew him better than anyone could.

The nature of comedy has interested many thinkers, from Plato to Freud, but film comedy has not received much theoretical attention in recent years. The essays in Comedy/Cinema/Theory use a range of critical and theoretical approaches to explore this curious and fascinating subject. The result is a stimulating, informative book for anyone interested in film, humor, and the art of bringing the two together. Comedy remains a central human preoccupation, despite the vagaries in form that it has assumed over the centuries in different media. In his introduction, Horton surveys the history of the study of comedy, from Aristophanes to the present, and he also offers a perspective on other related comic forms: printed fiction, comic books, TV sitcoms, jokes and gags. Some essays in the collection focus on general issues concerning comedy and cinema. In lively (and often humorous) prose, such scholars as Lucy Fischer, Noel Carroll, Peter Lehman, and Brian Henderson employ feminist, post-Freudian, neo-Marxist, and Bakhtinian methodologies. The remaining essays bring theoretical considerations to bear on specific works and comic filmmakers. Peter Brunette, William Paul, Scott Bukatman, Dana Polan, Charles Eidsvik, Ruth Perlmutter, Stephen Mamber, and Andrew Horton provide different perspectives for analyzing The Three Stooges, Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Dusan Makavejev, and Alfred Hitchcock's sole comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as well as the peculiar genre of cynical humor from Eastern Europe. As editor Horton notes, an over-arching theory of film comedy does not emanate from these essays. Yet the diversity and originality of the contributions reflect vital and growing interest in the subject, and both students of film and general moviegoers will relish the results.

Winner of the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Biography An Economist Best Book of 2021 A fresh, innovative biography of the twentieth century’s most iconic filmmaker. In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon—what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core, and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world. The book’s twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock’s life and work: “The Boy Who Couldn’t Grow Up”; “The Murderer”; “The Auteur”; “The Womanizer”; “The Fat Man”; “The Dandy”; “The Family Man”; “The Voyeur”; “The Entertainer”; “The Pioneer”; “The Londoner”; “The Man of God.” Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived but also the various versions of himself that he projected, and those projected on his behalf. From Hitchcock’s early work in England to his most celebrated films, White astutely analyzes Hitchcock’s oeuvre and provides new interpretations. He also delves into Hitchcock’s ideas about gender; his complicated relationships with “his women”—not only Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren but also his female audiences—as well as leading men such as Cary Grant, and writes movingly of Hitchcock’s devotion to his wife and lifelong companion, Alma, who made vital contributions to numerous classic Hitchcock films, and burnished his mythology. And White is trenchant in his assessment of the Hitchcock persona, so carefully created that Hitchcock became not only a figurehead for his own industry but nothing less than a cultural icon. Ultimately, White’s portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist, and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.

In a career that spanned six decades and more than sixty films, Alfred Hitchcock became the most widely recognized director who ever lived. His films -- including The 39 Steps, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds -- set new standards for cinematic invention and storytelling Élan. Since his death, Hitchcock has become crystallized in the public imagination as the macabre Englishman, the sexual obsessive, the Master of Suspense. But this remarkable biography draws on prodigious new research to restore Hitchcock the man -- the ingenious craftsman, the avid collaborator, the constant trickster, provocateur, and romantic. Like Hitchcock's best films, Patrick McGilligan's life of Hitchcock is a drama full of revelation, graced by a central love story, dark humor, and cliff-hanging suspense: a definitive portrait of the most creative, and least understood, figure in film history.

The first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actors Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting -- both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career -- Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.