Leslie H. Abramson Hitchcock & the Anxiety of Authorship

Annotation

Hitchcock and theAnxiety of Authorship examines issues ofcinema authorship engaged by and dynamized within the director's films. Aunique study of self-reflexivity in Hitchcock's work from his earliest Englishsilents to his final Hollywood features, this book considers how the director'sreleases constitute ever-shifting meditations on the conditions and strugglesof creative agency in cinema. Abramson explores how, located in literal andemblematic sites of dramatic production, exhibition, and reception, andpopulated by figures of directors, actors, and audiences, Hitchcock's filmsexhibit a complicated, often disturbing vision of authorship - one thatconsistently problematizes rather than exemplifies the director's longstandingauteurist image. Viewing Hitchcock in a striking new light, Abramson analyzesthese allegories of vexed agency in the context of his concepts of andcommentary on the troubled association between cinema artistry and authorship,as well as the changing cultural, industrial, theoretical, and historicalmilieus in which his features were produced. Accordingly, the book illuminateshow Hitchcock and his cinema register the constant dynamics that constitutefilm authorship.