Hitchcock's Films Revisited

With the exception of the prefatory material, which one can skip, this is one of the very best books on Hitchcock.

It is beautifully written and attentive to cinematic details and larger themes. It offers rich interpretations of several central films, with the first half focused on close interpretation and the second half, written later in Wood’s career, more orientated toward Marx, Freud, and gay studies.

Though the book is uneven, it contains some of the best analyses one will ever read of Hitchcock’s major films.

Wood’s book Hitchcock’s Films made the case that Hitchock was a major artist, not merely a manipulative “master of suspense” but someone who reflected profoundly on human limits, power, and authority, comedy and tragedy, men and women. He paved the way for later critics like William Rothman, who demonstrated that Hitchock’s films were richly rewarding frame by frame. Wood is always attentive to the human value of the movies he discusses, inquiring into the world of each film and wondering what it has to tell us. His book is great fun, but at the same time, it takes Hitchcock seriously… show more.