William Rothman -- Hitchcock, The Murderous Gaze -- Gables

Start: Nov 8 2012 6:30 pm

First published in 1982, William Rothman’s Hitchcock is a classic work of film criticism. Written in an engaging style that is philosophically sophisticated yet free of jargon, and using over nine hundred images from the films to illustrate and back up its critical claims, the book follows six different Hitchcock films as they unfold, moment by moment, from first shot to last. With exemplary precision, Hitchcock, The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition (SUNY $29.95) shows how Hitchcock films express, cinematically, serious thoughts about such matters as the nature and relationships of love, murder, sexuality, marriage, and theater—and about their own medium. By attending to the films themselves and to the ways we experience them, rather than allowing some theory to dictate what to say about them, the book proves the fruitfulness of an approach that is open and responsive to the ways serious films are capable of teaching us how to think seriously about them.