Hitchcock's Moral Gaze

Description

In his essays and interviews, Alfred Hitchcock was guarded about substantive matters of morality, preferring instead to focus on discussions of technique. That has not, however, discouraged scholars and critics from trying to work out what his films imply about such moral matters as honesty, fidelity, jealousy, courage, love, and loyalty. Through discussions and analyses of such films as Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Frenzy, the contributors to this book strive to throw light on the way Hitchcock depicts a moral—if not amoral or immoral—world. Drawing on perspectives from film studies, philosophy, literature, and other disciplines, they offer new and compelling interpretations of the filmmaker's moral gaze and the inflection point it provides for modern cinema.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
R. Barton Palmer and Steven M. Sanders

Skepticism

1. Jealousy and Trust in The Lodger
Graham Petrie

2. Fun with Suspicion
Thomas Leitch

3. Heroic Satans and Other Hitchcockian Heresies
Nick Haeffner

4. “Guilt, Confession, and . . . Then What?”: The Paradine Case and Under Capricorn
Brian McFarlane

5. The Forgotten Cigarette Lighter and Other Moral Accidents in Strangers on a Train
George Toles

Immorality

6. Hitchcock’s Immoralists
Steven M. Sanders

7. Hitchcock the Amoralist: Rear Window and the Pleasures and Dangers of Looking
Sidney Gottlieb

8. Voyeurism Revisited
Richard Allen

Moralizing

9. Alfred Hitchcock as Moralist
Murray Pomerance

10. The Deepening Moralism of The Wrong Man
R. Barton Palmer

11. Hitchcock and the Philosophical End of Film
Jerold J. Abrams

Moral Acts

12. The Dread of Ascent: The Moral and Spiritual Topography of Vertigo
Alan Woolfolk

13. The Philosophy of Marriage in North by Northwest
Jennifer L. Jenkins

14. “The Loyalty of an Eel”: Issues of Political, Personal, and Professional Morality in (and around) Torn Curtain
Neil Sinyard

15. Hobbes, Hume, and Hitchcock: The Case of Frenzy
Homer B. Pettey

Bibliography
Alfred Hitchcock Selected Filmography
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• Film
• Cinema
• History of film
• Visual culture
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 30 janvier 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438463865
• Langue: English

Extrait

Hitchcock’s Moral Gaze
Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis, editors, B Is for Bad Cinema
Dominic Lennard, Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors
Rosie Thomas, Bombay before Bollywood
Scott M. MacDonald, Binghamton Babylon
Sudhir Mahadevan, A Very Old Machine
David Greven, Ghost Faces
James S. Williams, Encounters with Godard
William H. Epstein and R. Barton Palmer, editors, Invented Lives, Imagined Communities
Lee Carruthers, Doing Time
Rebecca Meyers, William Rothman and Charles Warren, editors, Looking with Robert Gardner
Belinda Smaill, Regarding Life
Hitchcock’s Moral Gaze

Edited by
R. Barton Palmer, Homer B. Pettey, and Steven M. Sanders
Cover: Publicity still from Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953). Courtesy of Warner Bros. and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
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Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Palmer, R. Barton, 1946– editor. | Sanders, Steven, 1945– editor. | Pettey, Homer B., editor.
Title: Hitchcock’s moral gaze / edited by R. Barton Palmer, Steven M. Sanders, and Homer B. Pettey.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes filmography. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031494 (print) | LCCN 2016048537 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463858 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463865 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899–1980—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.H58 H5755 2017 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.H58 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/33092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031494
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
R. Barton Palmer and Steven M. Sanders
Skepticism
1. Jealousy and Trust in The Lodger
Graham Petrie
2. Fun with Suspicion
Thomas Leitch
3. Heroic Satans and Other Hitchcockian Heresies
Nick Haeffner
4. “Guilt, Confession, and … Then What?”: The Paradine Case and Under Capricorn
Brian McFarlane
5. The Forgotten Cigarette Lighter and Other Moral Accidents in Strangers on a Train
George Toles
Immorality
6. Hitchcock’s Immoralists
Steven M. Sanders
7. Hitchcock the Amoralist: Rear Window and the Pleasures and Dangers of Looking
Sidney Gottlieb
8. Voyeurism Revisited
Richard Allen
Moralizing
9. Alfred Hitchcock as Moralist
Murray Pomerance
10. The Deepening Moralism of The Wrong Man
R. Barton Palmer
11. Hitchcock and the Philosophical End of Film
Jerold J. Abrams
Moral Acts
12. The Dread of Ascent: The Moral and Spiritual Topography of Vertigo
Alan Woolfolk
13. The Philosophy of Marriage in North by Northwest
Jennifer L. Jenkins
14. “The Loyalty of an Eel”: Issues of Political, Personal, and Professional Morality in (and around) Torn Curtain
Neil Sinyard
15. Hobbes, Hume, and Hitchcock: The Case of Frenzy
Homer B. Pettey
Bibliography
Alfred Hitchcock Selected Filmography
Contributors
Index
Illustrations Figure 0.1 I Confess —Alma Keller (Dolly Haas) in moral crisis during the Logan trial . Figure 0.2 Father Logan (Montgomery Clift) with the dying Otto Keller (O.E. Hasse) . Figure 1.1 Flashing sign, The Lodger . Figure 1.2 The Lodger —Joe’s (Malcolm Keen) jealousy . Figure 2.1 Suspicion —glass of milk . Figure 3.1 Shadow of a Doubt —the world is a foul sty . Figure 4.1 Paradine Case —Judge Gay (Charles Laughton) advances . Figure 4.2 Under Capricorn —anguish and atonement . Figure 5.1 Strangers on a Train —Bruno (Robert Walker) with Guy’s (Farley Granger) cigarette lighter . Figure 5.2 Bruno’s fingers and the lighter . Figure 6.1 Hitchcock with Rope cast . Figure 7.1 Rear Window —Jefferies (James Stewart) in anguish . Figure 7.2 Jefferies falls . Figure 8.1 Lisa (Grace Kelly) and Jefferies (James Stewart) watching . Figure 8.2 Miss Lonely Hearts (Judith Evelyn) . Figure 9.1 The Man Who Knew Too Much —fake Draytons . Figure 10.1 Manny (Henry Fonda) at the Insurance Office . Figure 11.1 The Birds —birds as theater audience members . Figure 12.1 Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes) leaving sanitarium . Figure 13.1 Eve (Eve Marie Saint) walking down the train “aisle.” Figure 13.2 Thornhill (Cary Grant) and the new Mrs. Thornhill in their berth . Figure 14.1 Torn Curtain —blackboard scene . Figure 15.1 Frenzy —Rusk’s (Barry Foster) flashback post-murder . Figure 15.2 Oxford’s (Alec McCowen) aural flashback of Blaney’s (Jon Finch) cries of innocence .
Acknowledgments
R. Barton Palmer recognizes those fellow students and faculty, members of the Dartmouth College Film Society in 1964–1965, who spared neither time nor expense in mounting the first American retrospective of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, which was complete save for those then unavailable for exhibition. To an eighteen-year old undergraduate, the experience in the Hopkins Center theater, week after week, was more than enlightening and gave rise to a life-changing enthusiasm.
Homer B. Pettey would like to thank his friend and fellow admirer of Hitchcock, the late crossword genius Merl Reagle; his pals in crime, Carter Burwell and Chip Johannessen, who continually open his eyes to the magic of the industry; and especially to the loved ones who make his life better, Jennifer and Melissa.
Steven M. Sanders thanks his parents, Herb and Ruth Sanders, for bringing him and his sister Lynn to the Gables Theatre to see Vertigo , best friend Mike Stephans for sharing in the horror at the Trail Theater screening of Psycho , and his wife Christeen for aiding and abetting (to say nothing of abating) numerous viewings of Hitch’s films.
Introduction
R. B ARTON P ALMER AND S TEVEN M. S ANDERS
An Unrivaled Figure
I N THE WEEK FOLLOWING I NGMAR B ERGMAN’S death, film critic David Denby wrote in The New Yorker that Bergman “was perhaps the most influential of all filmmakers as well as the most widely parodied” (10). Of course, Denby said “perhaps,” and he supported this view by writing that “In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, antic couples quarreled in mock Swedish, film students spoofed his morbid dream sequences, Woody Allen sent the hooded figure of death from ‘The Seventh Seal’ stalking through ‘Love and Death.’ ” Nevertheless, this assertion was astonishing. It was as if someone had called Nietzsche “perhaps the most influential of all philosophers as well as the most widely parodied,” and had noted that in the nineteen-seventies students walked about Harvard Square in Nietzsche T-shirts, that some thinker had designated Nietzsche the philosopher of the twentieth century, that even the much-heralded HBO television series The Sopranos invoked the pronouncement for which Nietzsche is best known (at least to non-philosophers): “God is dead.”
Indeed, the case for Nietzsche is considerably stronger than the analogous one for Bergman. While there may be no obvious alternative candidates to Nietzsche as the “most influential” philosopher (at least in the twentieth century)—with the possible exception of John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, or Ludwig Wittgenstein, if philosopher Richard Rorty is right (5)—there is an obvious alternative to Bergman in the person of Alfred Hitchcock, whose work has influenced and been imitated, parodied, and otherwise sent up by admirers and acolytes from Mel Brooks and Jonathan Demme to Gus Van Sant and Brian de Palma (see Boyd and Palmer). Has there ever been a more recognizable filmmaker, one who combined artistic achievement so thoroughly with commercial success, and whose influence can be felt in such disparate movements and subgenres as film noir, the French New Wave, the thriller, the psychological drama, espionage, romance, and horror films? Another significant indication of the continued influence and importance of Hitchcock is the ascent of Vertigo , his 1958 assay of the passions and obsessions of romantic love, to the top of the 2012 Sight Sound critics poll, displacing for the first time in four decades Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). While there can be little doubt about his place in the history of filmmaking, the essays in this volume provide new and compelling perspectives on Hitchcock, who worked through a “moral lens” whose contours and significance continue to provoke complex and appreciative responses.
A Philosophical Filmmaker
Irving Singer argues that Alfred Hitchcock, much like both Orson Welles and Jean Renoir, was not only a “grea