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Hitchcock and His Legacy
Thursday, 6.00-10.00 p.m., room. 404 (66 West 12th Street)
Instructor: Sam Ishii-Gonzales <sam.ishiigonzales@gmail.com>
Teaching Assistant: Ryan Garretson <ryan.garretson@gmail.com>
Office hours + location: Tuesday, 4 to 5 p.m. and Wednesday 5 to 7 p.m., Dept. of Media Studies and
Film, 70 5th Avenue, rm. 1300. Email for appointment.
Required Texts:
(Available at Barnes and Noble, 5th Avenue, 18th Street)
Charles Barr, Vertigo
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, revised edition
Robin Wood, Hitchcock’s Films Revisited
Grading:
10% Attendance1
20% Participation, including brief research assignments
30% Mid-Term
40% Final Paper (8 to 10 pages)
Course Description:
This lecture course will study the remarkable career of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), one of the seminal
figures in the development of cinema as a major art form in its own right. Hitchcock directed fifty-three
feature films over a fifty year period, a period which spans most of the crucial developments in the history
of the moving image: from silent to sound film, from black-and-white to color, from standard aspect ratio
to widescreen, from smaller, more artisanal forms of European filmmaking to large-scale Hollywood
spectacles, and back again. Through a screening of a dozen Hitchcock films, and excerpts from many
others, the class will explore the development of the filmmaker’s aesthetic, his tireless pursuit of “pure
cinema” (drawing on lessons learned from both German Expressionism and Soviet Montage), as well as
more general issues related to evolving conceptions of cinematic style, changes in modes of film
production, and transformations in the critical analysis of the cinema. Emphasis will be placed throughout
on the filmmaker’s formal rigor and stylistic experimentation. The final weeks of the class will consider his
legacy through an analysis of a number of European and American sources, including recent work by video
and installation artists. Here we will avoid the cliché of equating Hitchcock with thrillers and “surprise”
twist endings. Attendance and participation are required, as well as one or two outside screenings. There
will be one exam and a final paper, both of which will give students a number of essay options related to
class material.
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Attendance: the professor will waive your first absence. Every absence after this will reduce your
attendance grade accordingly, no exceptions: 2 absences (B+), 3 absences (C), and 4 absences (D). Every
second or third tardy (based on how excessive it is) will equal an absence. Students will be allowed to miss
3 class screenings without it affecting their attendance grade. After this, each missed screening will reduce
their attendance grade by a third.
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Weekly Schedule
27 January
Snow Day – Class Cancelled
February 3
Session I: Introduction to Course • Apprenticeship in Cinema • Cinema, 1895 to 1920 • German Influence
(Expressionism)
Film: The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1926), plus Snowball Fight (Lumière Brothers, c1897), Great Train
Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903)
Clips from Lonesdale Operator (D.W. Griffith, 1911), Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919) and
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 25-87.
Robin Wood, “Introduction (1965),” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 55-85.
February 10
Session II: British Period (1925-1939) • Hitchcock, Master of Suspense • Soviet Influence (Montage) •
Acting for the Cinema
Film: The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)
Clips from Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925), The Ring (Hitchcock, 1927), Blackmail (Hitchcock, 1929),
Sabotage (Hitchcock, 1936), Foreign Correspondent (Hitchcock, 1940), and A Talk with Hitchcock
(Fletcher Markle, 1964)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 89-125.
Alfred Hitchcock, “Direction,” on Blackboard (BB). 2
Pascal Bonitzer, “Hitchcockian Suspense,” on BB.
V.I. Pudovkin, excerpt from Film Technique and Film Acting on BB.
February 17
Session III: Hitchcock in Hollywood • Hollywood Studio System • Against Coverage
Film: Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943)
Clips from Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), and Visions of Light (Arnold
Glassman and Todd McCarthy, 1992)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 127-51.
Robin Wood, “Norms and Variations: The 39 Steps and Young and Innocent,” in Hitchcock’s Films
Revisited, pp. 275-87.
David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, “The Hollywood Studio System, 1930-1945,” on BB.
Background reading:
David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, “Continuity Editing” (excerpt), on BB.
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All readings other than the three course textbooks will be posted to Blackboard unless otherwise noted.
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February 24
Session IV: Hitchcock Under Contract • Hitchcock, Surrealism, and Psychoanalysis
Film: Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)
Clips from Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, 1928), Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), and
Memory of the Camps (Hitchcock et al., c1945)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 151-67.
Robin Wood, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 288-302.
Lindsay Anderson, “Alfred Hitchcock,” on BB.
Mladen Dolar, “Hitchcock’s Objects,” on BB (read first section on Shadow of a Doubt).
March 3
Session V: Hitchcock, Independent Filmmaker • La Caméra-Stylo or Writing with the Camera
Film: Rope (Hitchcock, 1948)
Clips from Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), and Lifeboat (1944)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 167-77.
Robin Wood, “Star and Auteur: Hitchcock’s Films with Bergman,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp.
303-35.
Alexandre Astruc, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La caméra-stylo,” on BB.
David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, “American Cinema in the Postwar Era, 1945-1960,” on BB.
Pascal Bonitzer, “Notorious,” on BB.
March 10
Session VI: Hitchcock’s America • Doppelgänger – Figure of the Double • The Uncanny
Film: Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)
Clip from Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 179-91.
Robin Wood, “The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 33657.
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” on BB.
Jean-Pierre Coursodon, “Desire Roped In: Notes on the Fetishism of the Long Take in Rope,” on BB.
V.F. Perkins, “Rope,” on BB.
March 17
No Class – Spring Break
March 24
Session VII: Hitchcock, Auteur • Transfer of Guilt
Film: Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Clips from I Confess (Hitchcock, 1953), Dial ‘M’ for Murder (Hitchcock, 1954) and Man Who Knew Too
Much (Hitchcock, 1956)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 193-207.
Robin Wood, “Strangers on a Train,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 86-99.
Mladen Dolar, “Hitchcock’s Objects,” on BB (second half on Strangers on a Train).
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Patricia Highsmith, excerpts from her novel Strangers on a Train on BB.
Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, excerpt from Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films, on BB.
Background Reading:
John Caughie, introduction to Theories of Authorship, on BB.
March 31
Session VIII: Perfection of the System • Subjectivity and Point of View
+ Mid-Term Exam (distributed at end of session; part one due on April 7, part two due on April 14)
Film: Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Clips from Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) and The Wrong Man (Hitchcock, 1957)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 209-33.
Robin Wood, “Rear Window,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 100-7.
Miran Bozovic, “The Man Behind His Own Retina,” on BB.
Edward Branigan, “The Point-of-View Shot,” on BB.
Jean-Luc Godard, review of The Wrong Man, on BB.
Cornell Woolrich, “Rear Window,” on BB.
Background Reading:
David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, “Narrative as a Formal System” (excerpt), on BB.
April 7
Session IV: “They Were Aroused by Pure Cinema” • Hitchcock and Feminism
Film: Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) + Lamb to the Slaughter (Hitchcock, 1958)
Clip from Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946)
Readings:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 235-57.
Robin Wood, “Vertigo,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 108-30.
Charles Barr, Vertigo.
Tania Modleski, “Femininity By Design,” on BB.
Laura Mulvey, “Visual and Narrative Pleasure,” on BB.
April 14
Session X: Abyss and Beyond • Psycho x 3
Film: The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)
Clips from Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998)
Readings:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 259-83.
Robin Wood, “Psycho,” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 142-51.
Robert Bloch, chapters 1-3 of Psycho, on BB.
Jean Douchet, “Hitch and His Audience,” on BB.
Laura Mulvey, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960),” on BB.
April 21
Session XI: Late Hitchcock • The Film That Never Was: Kaleidoscope
Film: Frenzy (Hitchcock, 1972)
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Clip from Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960), Torn Curtain (Hitchcock, 1966) and Topaz (Hitchcock,
1969), and Henri-George Clouzot’s Inferno (Serge Bromberg, 2009)
Reading:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 285-99, 301-320.
Robin Wood, “The Birds,” pp. 152-72.
Elisabeth Weis, “The Evolution of Hitchcock’s Aural Style and Sound in The Birds,” on BB.
April 28
Session XII: Sixties Art Cinema
Film: Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
Clip from Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965), Bride Wore Black (François Truffaut, 1968), and La femme
infidel (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
Readings:
François Truffaut, Hitchcock, pp. 323-49.
Robin Wood, “Retrospective (1977),” in Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, pp. 206-27.
András Bálint Kovács, “Narration in Modern Cinema,” on BB.
May 5
Session XIII: New Hollywood • Chris Marker on Vertigo (or La Jetée)
Film: The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppala, 1974) + La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
Clips from Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970), Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973), Dressed
to Kill (De Palma, 1980), Blow-Out (De Palma, 1981), and Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)
Readings:
Chris Marker, “Vertigo (A Free Replay),” on BB.
Frank P. Tomasulo, “’You’re Tellin Me You Didn’t See’: Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Antonioni’s
Blow-Up,” on BB.
May 12
Session XIV: After Hitchcock • Psycho 24/7: Douglas Gordon and New Media
Film: Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005) + 4 Vertigo (Les LeVeque, 2000)
Clip from Phoenix Tapes (Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller, 1999) and The Pervert’s Guide to
Cinema (Sophie Fiennes, 2006)
Reading:
Slavoj Zizek, “’In His Bold Gaze My Ruin is Writ Large,’” on BB.
May 19
Session XV: End of the Line
+ Final due
Film: North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959) or Family Plot (Hitchcock, 1976) or Mulholland Drive (David
Lynch, 2001)
Readings:
Kerry Brougher, “Hitch-Hiking in Dreamscapes.”
Thomas Levin, “Five Tapes, Four Halls, Two Dreams: Vicissitudes of Surveillant Narration in Michael
Haneke’s Caché,” on BB.