Hitchcock And Twentieth-century Cinema.

Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema looks at the work, influences, legacy and style of one of cinema's most famous directors. Alfred Hitchcock worked in Britain and America, in silent and sound films, and through and beyond the studio system, all the time appealing to mass audiences while employing his own distinctive style. This book examines how he was affected by German cinema, British writing, the Hays Code and his own upbringing to produce films that challenged key notions of acting, sexuality, mise-en-scene and narrative convention. John Orr contends that Hitchcock is a matrix figure who forged a new dynamics of exchange and of re-made identities in the feature film that in turn has influenced film noir, neo-noir, the French New Wave and David Lynch, as well as countless filmmakers all around the world and, indeed, continues to do so.

John Orr is professor emeritus in the School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Cinema and Modernity, Contemporary Cinema, and The Art and Politics of Film, and coeditor of The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda and The Cinema of Roman Polanski.