Hitchcock Annual (1993) - Hitchcock in Hollywood / Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan
Details
- book review: Hitchcock in Hollywood / Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan
- author(s): Charles L.P. Silet
- journal: Hitchcock Annual (1993)
- issue: page 140
- journal ISSN: 1062-5518
- keywords: "Hitchcock and Selznick" - by Leonard J. Leff, "Hitchcock's Films" - by Robin Wood, "Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation" - by Robert E Kapsis, "The Impossible Embodiment" - by Michel Chion, Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Fredric Jameson, MacGuffin, Marnie (1964), Michel Chion, Murder! (1930), North by Northwest (1959), Paramount Pictures, Pascal Bonitzer, Psycho (1960), Raymond Bellour, Rear Window (1954), Rebecca (1940), Robert E. Kapsis, Slavoj Žižek, The 39 Steps (1935), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Tom Ryall
Links
Article
Hitchcock in Hollywood. Joel W. Finler. New York: Continuum, 1992. 176 pages. $17.95 cloth.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to ask Hitchcock). Slavoj Žižek, ed. London and New York: Verso, 1992. 279 pages. $18.95 paper.
Reviewed by CHARLES L.P. SILET
In Hitchcock in Hollywood Joel Finler has written an interesting, at times quite useful, but ultimately rather slight study of Hitchcock's years working within the American studio system. Using a combination of production statistics, Hollywood history, film criticism, and anecdote, he pieces together Hitchcock's career from the time he left Great Britain in the late 1930s to work for David O. Selznick through the conclusion of his career in the mid-1970s.
As he states in his Introduction, Finler wants to fill what he perceives as a serious gap between "the analytical studies of Hitchcock and his films ... and the biographical writing that presents useful information about his life and filmmaking, but suffers from a lack of historical perspective" (10). Finler regards himself less as a critic than as a film historian with a special knowledge of the development of the American cinema, and he declares that his book will make up for the deficiencies of academic scholarship, which is too narrowly written, and popular biography, which is too historically restricted.
Therefore, the book is arranged chronologically with each period treating the history and production of two or more films. The opening chapter, "1939-1940: Hitchcock and Selznick," deals with Rebecca (1940) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Other chapters focus on Hitchcock's stint with a particular studio, such as Chapter 6 ("1953-55: Paramount"), which covers the films from [[Rear Windo...
Charles L.P. Silet teaches courses in film, contemporary fiction, and American culture at Iowa State University. He is editing a collection of essays on Hitchcock's Psycho and finishing a collection of interviews with writers of crime fiction.
