Although Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague don’t dare say as
much in their introduction to A Companion
to Alfred Hitchcock, they certainly seemed to have compiled their essay
anthology to be a sort of final word on Hitchcock scholarship. Now this is no
more likely than the idea that Mark Lewisohn’s sprawling All These Years series will put an end to Beatles books, but there
is a similar sweeping scope to A
Companion that could keep a lot of students from bothering with another
Hitchcock study.
Our two editors are well aware of all the other anthologies
on the market and selected their essays accordingly. There have already been ample
discussions of Hitchcock’s macguffins and his storyboarding and his theories
about suspense vs. surprise and his cynicism, misogyny, and so on. Any new
volume can only serve its purpose by approaching this well-exhausted topic in
fresh ways without overreaching. A satisfying number of the thirty essays
contained in A Companion to Alfred
Hitchcock accomplish that, as when Lesley Brill counters the usual
accusations of cynicism by convincingly repainting Hitchcock as a romantic both
in his treatment of love and his charming reliance on fairy tale structure.
Richard Allen reaches beyond the usual noir suspects to look at the director’s
influence on less recognized followers, such as Last Year at Marienbad, Blow
Up, The Tenant, Something Wild, and Jurassic Park. In general, the writers also do a decent job of looking beyond the most over-analyzed Hitchcock films (Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, etc., which are well-represented here too) and into such relative obscurities as The Pleasure Garden, I Confess, and The Lodger, making for a fuller picture of his work than we often receive. Teachers and students
alike will find much to keep themselves busy in A Companion to Alfred
Hitchcock... at least until the next heavy-duty study of his work arrives.
