Hitchcock’s Films
Dr. Kyle Stevens
Spring 2012
Office hours: T/Th, 12:30-1:30 and by appointment
Email: cks1@pitt.edu
ENGFLM 1472
CRN: 25526
Tuesday 1-4:50 pm
209 David Lawrence Hall
This course will look at the evolution of Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema. We will
screen a majority of his body of work, which not only spans silent cinema, British
classical cinema, Classical Hollywood, television, and New Hollywood, but includes
several masterworks of film history. In this respect, we will experience the work of
one of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. We will see
“the master of suspense” turning again and again to stories of personal struggles with
social and legal constraints. Since these particularly involve sexual desire, jealousy,
greed, romance, marriages, friendships, and families, we will pay special attention to
the representations of gender, sex, class, and sexuality—and to the shifting
ideological contexts for those depictions.
Besides acquiring knowledge of film history and a cultural touchstone, and
perhaps even an appreciation for Hitchcock’s craft and style, we will trace key
concepts and debates in the history of the discipline of Film Studies. Indeed,
Hitchcock is arguably the most important director to the emergence and development
of film theory. By reading Robin Wood’s seminal book, as well as key essays in
Hitchcockiana, we will engage in interpretive debates with the authors about the films
we watch. These texts will also allow us to examine how Hitchcock’s films have
been taken up and deployed as cases by film scholars in particular historical moments
as evidence for competing arguments about authorship, the aesthetic merit of cinema,
directors and performers, the relationship of art and film genres, art and commerce,
art and entertainment, and the place of popular culture in our lives as individuals and
as citizens.
Required Textbooks
Hitchcock’s Films Revisited by Robin Wood [RW]
A Hitchcock Reader, edited by Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague [HR]
Schedule of Classes and Assignments
January 10: Introduction to the Course
Schedule of Classes and Assignments
January 10: Introduction to the Course
Screen: Murder! (1930): DVD 7053
January 17: Silent Hitchcock
Screen: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Watch on your own: Blackmail (1929): DVD 7058
Read: “Introduction (1965)” [RW]; “Symmetry, Closure, Disruption:
The Ambiguity of Blackmail” [RW]; “Hitchcock’s The Lodger” [HR]
Recommended: Easy Virtue (1928), Jamaica Inn (1939)
January 24: Melodramatic Hitchcock
Screen: Rebecca (1940): DVD 1360
Watch on your own: The Lady Vanishes (1938): DVD 7045
Read: Hitchcock Discovers America: The Selznick-Era Films” by Ina
Rae Hark [CW]; “Rematerializing the Vanishing ‘Lady’: Feminism,
Hitchcock, and Interpretation”
Recommended: Lifeboat (1944): DVD 3470
January 31: Hitchcock, Master of Hollywood
Screen: Shadow of a Doubt (1943): DVD 443
Watch on your own: The Wrong Man (1956): DVD 1876
Read: “Ideology, Genre, Auteur: Shadow of a Doubt” [RW];
“Hitchcock’s Imagery and Art” by Maurice Yacowar [HR]
Recommended: The Paradine Case (1947), Sabotage (1936), Stage
Fright (1950)
February 7: Cary Grant and Hitchcock
Screen: Notorious (1946): DVD 1354
Watch on your own: Suspicion (1941): DVD 1870
Read: “Notorious: Perversion Par Excellence” by Richard Abel [HR];
“Some Hitchcockian Shots” by Murray Pomerance [CW]
February 14: Surreal Hitchcock
Screen: Spellbound (1945): DVD 1356
Read: “Star and Auteur: Hitchcock’s Films with Bergman” [RW]; “The
Moral Universe of Spellbound” by Thomas Hyde [HR]
February 21: Queer Hitchcock
Screen: Rope (1948): DVD 12262
Read: “My Most Exciting Picture” [CW]; “Strangers on a Train” and
February 21: Queer Hitchcock
Screen: Rope (1948): DVD 12262
Read: “My Most Exciting Picture” [CW]; “Strangers on a Train” and
“The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia” [RW]
Watch on your own: Strangers on a Train (1951): DVD 1872
February 28: Funny Hitchcock
Screen: The Trouble with Harry (1955): DVD 1320
Recommended: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
MID-TERM ESSAY DUE
March 6: Spring Break
March 13: Grace Kelly, Hitchcock, and Windows
Screen: Rear Window (1954): DVD 655
Read: “Rear Window” [RW]; “Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Reflexivity
and the Critique of Voyeurism” by Robert Stam and Roberta Pearson
[HR]
Recommended: Dial M for Murder (1954): DVD 1878, The Man Who
Knew Too Much (1956): DVD 1357
March 20: Monumental Hitchcock, or, Grant’s Return
Screen: North by Northwest (1959): DVD 1871
Watch on your own: To Catch a Thief (1955): DVD 12321
Read: “North by Northwest” [RW]; “North by Northwest” by Stanley
Cavell [HR]
March 27: Hitchcock, Master of Film Art
Screen: Vertigo (1958): DVD 13868
Read: “Vertigo” and “Male Desire, Male Anxiety: The Essential
Hitchcock” [RW]; “A Closer Look at Scopophilia: Mulvey, Hitchcock,
and Vertigo” [HR]
April 3: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Fear
Screen: Psycho (1960): DVD 89
Read: “Psycho” [RW], Psycho Dossier, pages 327-377 [HR]
Recommended: Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV series)
April 10: Scary Hitchcock
Screen: The Birds (1963): DVD 401
Read: “The Birds” [RW]; “Hitch and His Public” by Jean Douchet [HR];
“Hitch as Matrix Figure: Hitchcock and Twentieth Century Cinema” by
John Orr [HR]
Recommended: Marnie (1964)
John Orr [HR]
Recommended: Marnie (1964)
April 17: Hitch
Screen: Frenzy (1972): DVD 413
Watch on your own: Torn Curtain (1966): DVD 1358
Read: “Torn Curtain (1969)” and “Retrospective” [RW]; “Hitchcock’s
Legacy” by Richard Allen [CW]
Recommended: Family Plot (1976)
FINAL ESSAY DUE: April 24th at noon, in my mailbox