Spring Film Series

Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, built an impressive catalogue of some 54 feature films – dozens of other shorts, television series – during his 55-year directorial career. Averaging a film a year while filming in both England and the US, “Hitch” crafted one of the most impressive, influential, groundbreaking, and enduring catalogues in film history.

This course will examine 7 of Hitchcock’s most well-known films, all of which are excellent examples art from a man driven by innovation in both technical and narrative realms, and whose ability to marry the two is nearly peerless. While many of his most famous films are missing from our discussion, the goal of the course is to lay bare the essentials of viewing a Hitchcock film, so that as you expand your personal viewing into his cannon, you will know what to watch for to make your screenings as fulfilling as possible. Similarly, when you return to the films chosen for our class for a second viewing, you will see even more details, nuances, and techniques hidden in each of these works.

The films we’ll be watching and discussing are:

• The Lodger
• The 39 Steps
• Shadow of a Doubt
• Rope
• Strangers on a Train
• Rear Window
• Vertigo

We will consider these films in the context of the impact of editing and camera movement, especially as these tools carry over from the silent era; the narrative motifs that link his works across decades; the impact of popularized theories of psychoanalysis and gender norms as part of dominant culture vis-à-vis the technical and narrative choices employed; and other aesthetic choices that become motifs throughout his films.