Hitchcock's America

Hitchcock's American films are not only some of the most admired works ofworld cinema; they also offer some of our most acute responses to the changingshape of American society in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. The contributors to thisanthology--scholars of film, history, and literature--show how famous films likeStrangers on a Train, Vertigo, Psycho, and Rear Window along with more obscureones like The Trouble with Harry and Family Plot register the ideologies andinsurgencies, the normative assumptions and cultural alternatives, that shapedthose tumultuous decades. The Hitchcock that emerges in this volume is notmerely the inspired technician and master of abnormal psychology that criticshave justly hailed. He is also a cultural critic of remarkable insight andundeniable prescience.

Jonathan Freedman is Professor of English at the University of Michigan.
Richard H. Millington is Associate Professor of English at Smith College.