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Hitchcock - The First Forty-four Films
Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. VERY HARD TO FIND in these contents clean, tight, unmarked, not ex/library. Very light shelf wear on text block
- GenresFilm
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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249 people want to read
About the author
Éric Rohmer
56 books47 followersÉric Rohmer (born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer) was a French film director and screenwriter. He is regarded as a key figure in the post-war New Wave cinema and is a former editor of influential French film journal Cahiers du cinéma. He was also the brother of philosopher and pedagogist René Schérer.
Scherer fashioned his pseudonym from the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series.
Rohmer was the last of the French New Wave directors to become established. He worked as the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma periodical from 1957 to 1963, while most of his Cahiers colleagues, among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, were making their names in international cinema.
Scherer fashioned his pseudonym from the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series.
Rohmer was the last of the French New Wave directors to become established. He worked as the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma periodical from 1957 to 1963, while most of his Cahiers colleagues, among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, were making their names in international cinema.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 3, 2013
Hitchcock d'après Éric Rohmer et, parmi les cinéastes français les plus dévoreurs de pellicule, Claude Chabrol. Enfin, une remarque : en 1957, Chabrol publie, avec Rohmer bien sûr, ce livre « Hitchcock » avant d'accepter un travail de chargé de presse à la « Twentieth Century Fox ». Avec ses amis cinéphiles, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette et Truffaut, en 1957 Chabrol s'intéresse tout particulièrement à Hitchcock qui, signalons le, à l'époque n'est pas encore reconnu comme un cinéaste de premier plan.
April 30, 2020
A great book on a great filmmaker. The chapters on Rear Window and The Wrong Man are worth the price of admission alone.
March 18, 2025
This is one of the first-ever critical texts on Alfred Hitchcock, and the first at book-length, written in 1957 (so predating the existence of several of his signature films, including Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds) by two future shining stars of the French New Wave. Though aware of the book for pretty much as long as I've studied AH, I'd never run across it in the wild till I spotted it on a shelf in a thrift shop a few weeks ago. Not only is Hitchcock a huge point of interest, so is the culture that grew up around Cahiers du Cinema and Nouvelle Vague, so obviously this was something I needed in my personal library. As a reading experience and an analytical study of Hitchcock's work, it's certainly a lot better than Donald Spoto's The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, which has aged very poorly, and probably not as trangressive or thought-provoking as Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited, which I just realized I never logged on this website for some reason.
The most important thing to understand about the book is how radical it was considered at the time to take Hitchcock seriously to this extent. He's now the most written-about, probably over-analyzed filmmaker in history, but in the 1950s -- particularly in England and America -- he much like John Ford was considered a purveyor of empty popcorn entertainment for the masses, which now seems insane. We can talk about the reasons for that and why it had changed (Hitchcock used to get great reviews when he was still working in England, and then when he was still under the aegis of David O. Selznick); my own theories probably sound conspiratorial -- Hollywood absolutely hates when directors attempt to take control over their own careers, as Hitchcock did when he formed Transatlantic in 1947 -- but I think that general anti-intellectualism probably meant that the degree to which French critics took him seriously didn't help his reputation much over here, it was just easy to ascribe to "those crazy French." And anyone who's read guys like Bosley Crowther and John Simon who drip with condescension toward the Master, and adamantly refused to view his work on its own terms, knows how against the grain it was to view Hitchcock as a serious artist. (Interestingly, James Agee was a notable exception.)
For my part, I have my own ideas about Hitchcock's themes and ideas that often are a bit out of step with the way his work is widely viewed even today. Wood's interpretations probably come closest to mine, but I'm a lot more influenced by the less known Australian film scholar Ken Mogg (with whom I've corresponded a bit over the years) and by Jonathan Rosenbaum in their views of Hitchcock as, essentially, both a humanist and a cynical realist, which is of course contradictory. Like Ford, Hitchcock becomes fascinating because of those unresolvable contradictions. Occasionally I feel like Chabrol and Rohmer have a decent grasp of the humanist aspects of Hitchcock's worldview, when they take note for example of the importance of juggling identification ("transference") in movies like Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. I think also that their emphasis on characterization as a major factor in Hitchcock's success and artistic wisdom is ahead of its time, because so much of the serious writing about him for years hinged on rather facile ideas about sexual obsession and narrative trickery that isn't really borne out by either the films themselves or by what Hitchcock himself said about his work. In other words, this book avoids superficial psychoanalysis of the director himself, which is more than welcome, but it does also get tied up in a couple of cul-de-sacs I think aren't super productive: namely the focus on Catholic imagery (it could just be me, but this sort of fixation is just dull beyond belief to me) and the Spoto-like insistence on cataloging "symbols" and "objects" which often strikes me, in both books, as desperate.
Chabrol and Rohmer obviously thought extensively about Hitchcock's work and were passionate about it; they also quote peers Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut in their own deeper musings, and I personally think it's such an exciting notion to imagine having a group of friends who were excited about this stuff and then went out and made their own movies. (I feel that way even though I don't actually care for Rohmer's own films!) It just seems like such a fun and intriguing chapter in cinematic history, and of course they were all correct about how brilliant and rich Hitchcock's art was, something they were among the very first to perceive.
The homophobia, though? In dealing with an artist who, whatever his personal flaws, I'm convinced was assuredly not a homophobe? Not a fan!
The most important thing to understand about the book is how radical it was considered at the time to take Hitchcock seriously to this extent. He's now the most written-about, probably over-analyzed filmmaker in history, but in the 1950s -- particularly in England and America -- he much like John Ford was considered a purveyor of empty popcorn entertainment for the masses, which now seems insane. We can talk about the reasons for that and why it had changed (Hitchcock used to get great reviews when he was still working in England, and then when he was still under the aegis of David O. Selznick); my own theories probably sound conspiratorial -- Hollywood absolutely hates when directors attempt to take control over their own careers, as Hitchcock did when he formed Transatlantic in 1947 -- but I think that general anti-intellectualism probably meant that the degree to which French critics took him seriously didn't help his reputation much over here, it was just easy to ascribe to "those crazy French." And anyone who's read guys like Bosley Crowther and John Simon who drip with condescension toward the Master, and adamantly refused to view his work on its own terms, knows how against the grain it was to view Hitchcock as a serious artist. (Interestingly, James Agee was a notable exception.)
For my part, I have my own ideas about Hitchcock's themes and ideas that often are a bit out of step with the way his work is widely viewed even today. Wood's interpretations probably come closest to mine, but I'm a lot more influenced by the less known Australian film scholar Ken Mogg (with whom I've corresponded a bit over the years) and by Jonathan Rosenbaum in their views of Hitchcock as, essentially, both a humanist and a cynical realist, which is of course contradictory. Like Ford, Hitchcock becomes fascinating because of those unresolvable contradictions. Occasionally I feel like Chabrol and Rohmer have a decent grasp of the humanist aspects of Hitchcock's worldview, when they take note for example of the importance of juggling identification ("transference") in movies like Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. I think also that their emphasis on characterization as a major factor in Hitchcock's success and artistic wisdom is ahead of its time, because so much of the serious writing about him for years hinged on rather facile ideas about sexual obsession and narrative trickery that isn't really borne out by either the films themselves or by what Hitchcock himself said about his work. In other words, this book avoids superficial psychoanalysis of the director himself, which is more than welcome, but it does also get tied up in a couple of cul-de-sacs I think aren't super productive: namely the focus on Catholic imagery (it could just be me, but this sort of fixation is just dull beyond belief to me) and the Spoto-like insistence on cataloging "symbols" and "objects" which often strikes me, in both books, as desperate.
Chabrol and Rohmer obviously thought extensively about Hitchcock's work and were passionate about it; they also quote peers Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut in their own deeper musings, and I personally think it's such an exciting notion to imagine having a group of friends who were excited about this stuff and then went out and made their own movies. (I feel that way even though I don't actually care for Rohmer's own films!) It just seems like such a fun and intriguing chapter in cinematic history, and of course they were all correct about how brilliant and rich Hitchcock's art was, something they were among the very first to perceive.
The homophobia, though? In dealing with an artist who, whatever his personal flaws, I'm convinced was assuredly not a homophobe? Not a fan!
August 10, 2018
What a mixed bag. Some thoughtful analysis undermined by inexact memories of details from Hitchcock's films (seriously, screen a film before summarizing it), opinions presented as facts and, worst of all, a snobbish attitude from authors who repeatedly call out *other* critics as snobs. Good for people writing papers on Hitchcock, almost useless to the rest of us.
July 20, 2011
Very readable translation, interesting thoughts about the early/first 3/4 of his filmography. Theoretical, but enjoyable. Makes me want to watch them chronologically.
September 18, 2024
C'est le premier libre que j'ai lu en français et meme si il y a beaucoup de choses que je n'ai pas bien comprises, ça a été une bonne faison de l'améliorer en compagnie de deux cinéastes que je respecte énormément. Hitch ferait son meilleur film, a mon avis, aprés ce libre, et il serait bon de savoir ce que les auteurs en pensent...
May 10, 2023
Tres bonnes analyses du réalisateur Alfred Hitchcock. Meilleures même que celles de Truffaut dans son livre Hitchcock/Truffaut. Cela donne envie de voir les films respectifs de Chabrol et de Rohmer.
August 12, 2023
Imagine writing a book long analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's movies before he even makes North by Northwest, Vertigo or Psycho. While I found some of the insight the book had intriguing it was incredibly inconsistent in quality and sometimes as off kilter as the stuff you'd see in a Letterboxd review.
Want to read
January 16, 2026lol
January 16, 2011
A quick read, rather over the top in its praise of everything Hitch did, especially potboilers like Under Capricorn. But the first book to champion him as an auteur and to dig deeply into his themes (guilt, Catholicism), so perhaps needing to be extreme to make the case. Ends with The Wrong Man (with Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, etc. all in the future).
September 30, 2021
Dos grandes realizadores como Chabrol y Rohmer analizan y festejan la obra del Alfred Hitchcock. Imprescindible para los amantes de Hitch y del cine. Un gran estímulo para volver a ver la filmografía de este gran director con otra mirada.
September 4, 2015
It was good.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews