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Essay: hitchcock's movies and techniques
Essay: hitchcock's movies and techniques
Hitchcock auteur
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I. Identification
A. Book Citation
Pomerance, Murray. Alfred Hitchcock's America. Somerset, NJ: Polity, 2013. Print.
B. Author Information
The author of Alfred Hitchcock’s America, Murray Pomerance was born in Hamilton, Canada. He grew up there with a budding fascination for film. He went on to study at the University of Michigan were he gained a BA in sociology (Ryerson 2013). Murray Pomerance is currently a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada and he has taught courses dealing with subjects on Hollywood and Society, and media and society, at Ryerson University since 1973. In 1997, Pomerance was elected Chairman of the Sociology Department at Ryerson University (Ryerson 2013). At Ryerson, he created the Media Studies Working Group. Pomerance has had many works published in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Boston Review. In addition, Pomerance has received an O. Henry Award, as well (Ryerson 2013). Pomerance has been noted as an Alfred Hitchcock expert with previous works such as, An Eye for Hitchcock (2004) and
Murray Pomerance has published many other works on sociology and film such as, Shining in Shadows: Movie Stars on the 2000s (2011). In 2004, Pomerance published An Eye for Hitchcock at Rutgers University (Ryerson 2013). In this publication, Pomerance gives readers the ability to view and understand Hitchcock films in a completely new light. However, in 2013, Pomerance expanded on understanding Hitchcock when he wrote Alfred Hitchcock’s America. He goes on to explain the Hitchcock’s vision of America. There will be a more of a thorough analysis further in the paper.
II. Analysis
A. Theme
Alfred Hitchcock’s America is a thorough analysis and clarification of Hitchcock’s depiction, in his films, o...
... middle of paper ...
...merance provided excellent insight to the symbolism asserted in Hitchcock’s films.
IV. Works Cited
Ryerson University. "Programs." faculty. http://www.ryerson.ca/graduate/programs/comcult/faculty/pomerance.html (accessed November 25, 2013).
Brooks, Xan. "Alfred Hitchcock: 'Psycho was a joke'." The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/08/alfred-hitchcock-psycho-joke (accessed November 25, 2013).
Burgoyne, Robert . "Alfred Hitchcock's America." Wiley:. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd 0745653030.html (accessed November 25, 2013).
O'brien, Ciara . "Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock's America." Film Ireland RSS. http://filmireland.net/2013/04/29/book-review-alfred-hitchcocks-america/ (accessed November 24, 2013).
Nicholson, Malcolm. “The Master of Manipulation,” Review or Alfred Hitchcock’s America, by Prospect Magazine, May 21, 2013.
Among New American Ghost Cinema, one can witness the re-emergence of an interesting sub-genre: the Found Footage Cinema. We can observe this new fascination in many modern horror films such as 2008’s Cloverfield, 2009's Paranormal Activity, and 2011's Apollo 18. Digging below the surface of a literal reading of some of these movies, one finds a genre that can be far more intelligent than what meets the public eye. For example, within Cloverfield, the screams and images of smoke heaving through the city of Manhattan hint at post-September 11th. To understand the growing popularity of Found Footage Cinema and why we discover these political undertones, this paper will examine The Blair Witch Project (1999, Myrick and Sanchez) in the context of theorists Robin Wood and Jürgen Habermas’ discussion on humankind’s senses of truth and what our society represses or oppresses. Both Habermas’ essay “The Public Sphere” and Wood’s “Introduction to the American Horror Film” touch on the inner workings of the public’s mind. With these essays and an analysis of these films, I will be able to propose theories working towards a mode of critical engagement with the success of The Blair Witch Project. It is then that we will connect it to the wider social and political jungle surrounding America as it stood on the edge of the Twenty First Century.
Stam, Robert & Pearson, Robertson., ‘Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Refluxivity and the Critique of Voyeurism’ in Deutelbaum, Marshall & Poague, Leland A. ed., A Hitchcock Reader (John Wiley & Sons: 2009).
Regular among his works, Hitchcock opens the film with a hovering crane shot coasting over the setting of Phoenix, Arizona. Even without the mysterious, chilling soundtrack, the shot itself watched in silence evokes a timid passage into danger. In a long take it sweeps across the cityscape to build initial curiosity in the viewer, and then surpasses a curtain-drawn window into the presence of a hotel room’s trysting occupants. Immediately the viewer is called into confronting his/her discretion regarding those things we are not customarily meant to see, in such ideas as privacy and good taste. How far should the law step into a man’s world before he is discovered with reasonable certitude for engaging in illegal activities?
Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite subject was the superficial placidity of American life, whose clean, bright surfaces disguised the most shockingly moral, political, psychological and sexual aberrations. For Hitchcock, the most striking, funny, and terrifying quality of American life was its confidence in its sheer ordinariness. Beneath the surface, ordinary people and normal life were always ‘bent’ for Hitchcock.
After observing all of the Hitchcockian elements found in Rear Window, one can truly see that this movie is a genuine Hitchcockian film. It contains all the elements of a true Hitchcock film such as the icey platinum blonde, the blurring differentiation between what’s morally right and wrong, and the regular person being places into awkward or bizarre situations. All of these elements and characteristics of this film prove that Rear Window is a true Hitchcockian
Directed in 1999 the movie “America Beauty” by Sam Mendes takes the viewer to an average suburb community. Here, we meet the protagonist Lester Burnham. Lester is married to his wife Carolyn, and he has a fifteen-year-old daughter named Jane. Lester is portrayed as ordinary and unmemorable especially at his job. Thr...
Meneghetti, Michael. “Review: Ellis Cashmore (2009) Martin Scorsese’s America.” Film Philosophy 14.2 (2010). 161-168. Web. 6 Apr. 2014
Alfred Hitchcock developed his signature style from his earlier works The Lodger and Blackmail. These films were the framework for his signature films later on. His themes of “an innocent man who is accused of a crime” and “the guilty woman” were first seen in these two films and are repeated throughout Hitchcock’s cinematic history
Hitchcock has characteristics as an auteur that is apparent in most of his films, as well as this one.
Hitchcock embodies the ethical question of whether its morally acceptable to spy on the people living in the same neighbourhood, for the goodness of everyone living in that same community. The angle of the
This paper has attempted to investigate the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock blended conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy. It first looked at the opening scenes of the film in which the two conventions were introdruced. It then went on to analyse the film with the aid of Robin Wood's article Ideology, Genre, Auteur. From these two forms we can see that film noir and small town comedy were used as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.
Miller, Arthur. Miller on America. Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing 47.1 (2003): 13-16. EBSCO. Web. 8 Feb. 2013.
Cinema in of itself has always been voyeuristic due to the nature of what film is, watching others, and because of the predominantly heterosexual male creative heads and audience. As cinema developed over the years, directors incorporated the general desire and scandal of watching, specifically voyeuristic male gazes on women, to combine the audience's desire to watch with the desire of the characters watching within the film. This essay will focus on directors Alfred Hitchcock with his movie Psycho (1960) and David Lynch with Blue Velvet (1986) on their use of different filmography techniques within the films to give the audience further insight into the psyche of the male characters and blur the lines between lust and violence. This all branching
In the world today, most advocates stipulate that were live in ‘postmodern’ times. However, the term has been devalued in the past few decades. Though the term may have been regarded as concise in the past, it is today thinly spread over a broad range of social and cultural contexts. This issue is as true in film studies as in other aspects of the society. Postmodernity has become common while trying to characterize cinema in the 21st century. What the term suggests regarding contemporary film or the present-day society is far from agreed (Tudor, 2002). This paper examines the term ‘postmodernism’ as depicted in Andrew Tudor’s work “From Paranoia to Postmodernism: The Horror Movie in the Late Modern Society.”
In the film Hitchcock showed an American family’s unexpected encounter with the darkest side of European power struggles and a horrid personal misfortune that ensues. In the narrative space of the film we find the tongue-tied exasperations of Ben McKenna, Jo Conway’s frustrations both as a mother who lost her child and a Broadway performer who has lost her career and the kidnapped child Hank’s wide-eyed astonishment at the nefarious spectacles opening around him-all this brilliantly formalizes Hitchcock’s own encounter both with America and with the possibilities of cinema. (Pomerance 17). The ending of the film is based on a true life occurrence and the incident took place around 1910 known as Sidney Street siege (Truffaut 90). In the last