Architecture plays an important role In the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Steven Jacobs devotes lengthy discussion to a series of domestic buildings with the help of a number of reconstructed floor plans made specially for this book.
In this Companion, leading film scholars and critics of American culture and imagination trace Hitchcock's interplay with the Hollywood studio system, the Cold War, and new forms of sexuality, gender, and desire over his thirty-year American career.
Out of print for more than ten years, Bloch's conclusion to his terrifying Psycho Trilogy takes readers back to the Bates Motel, which has been turned into a tourist attraction--and the site of a whole new series of murders.
Winner of the AIGA'S International Competition for Notable Graphic Design. “It’s both an architecture and movie fan’s dream.” - Los Angeles Times "Strikingly designed." - Publishers Weekly “Explores the cinematic tradition of antiheroes with architecturally significant private spaces." - Architectural Digest “A fascinating gift for that highbrow nerd in your life.” - Syfy Wire Why do bad guys live in good houses? From Atlantis in The Spy Who Loved Me to Nathan Bateman's ultra-modern abode in Ex Machina, big-screen villains often live in architectural splendor. From a design standpoint, the villain’s lair, as popularized in many of our favorite movies, is a stunning, sophisticated, envy-inducing expression of the warped drives and desires of its occupant. Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains, celebrates and considers several iconic villains’ lairs from recent film history. From futuristic fantasies to deathtrap-laden hives, from dwellings in space to those under the sea, pop culture and architecture join forces in these outlandish, primarily modern homes and in Lair, which features buildings from fifteen films, including: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Star Wars The Incredibles Blade Runner 2049 You Only Live Twice The Ghost Writer Body Double North by Northwest Edited by acclaimed architect Chad Oppenheim with Andrea Gollin, Lair includes interviews with production designers and other industry professionals such as Ralph Eggleston, Richard Donner, Roger Christian, David Scheunemann, Gregg Henry, and Mark Digby. Contributors include director Michael Mann, cultural critic Christopher Frayling, museum director Joseph Rosa, and architect Amy Murphy. Architectural illustrations and renderings by Carlos Fueyo provide multiple in-depth views of these spaces.
The first book on Hitchcock that focuses exclusively on his work with actors Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting -- both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career -- Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.
Steven Jacobs' book provides a unique critical intervention into a relatively new area of scholarship - the multidisciplinary topic of film and the visual arts.
A novel of psychological terror set in a mental asylum that became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. From the outset, the air that Beeding’s characters breathe crackles with ominous electricity. This is surely what appealed to Alfred Hitchcock when he found Beeding’s The House of Dr. Edwardes and used it as the inspiration for his unforgettable film Spellbound. The “house” of the title is a lunatic asylum in France and Dr. Edwardes is the head psychiatrist. While Edwardes is held in high esteem, an almost iconic figure in psychiatric circles, there is something clearly amiss. The novel opens with a puzzling, ominous episode in which a patient being transported to the asylum grows agitated as the car bringing him there approaches. The patiently suddenly screams: “the gorge of the devil” and then attacks and kills one of the supervisors, a promising but inexperienced psychiatrist. This opens a position that Dr. Sedgwick accepts, but on arrival, she learns that Dr. Edwardes has taken a leave of absence to calm his nerves. It doesn’t take her long to discover that the house is hardly in order. Unlike Hitchcock’s Spellbound, The House of Dr. Edwardes owes less to Freud, displaying much closer affinities with the brooding, psychological landscapes of Gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The result is a compelling work—part mystery, part modern Gothic.
Foster Hirsch's Dark Side of the Screen is by far the most thorough and entertaining study of the themes, visual motifs, character types, actors, directors, and films in this genre ever published. From Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Robert Aldrich, and Howard Hawkes to Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and Paul Schrader, the noir themes of dread, paranoia, steamy sex, double-crossing women, and menacing cityscapes have held a fascination. The features that make Burt Lancaster, Joan Crawford, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart into noir heroes and heroines are carefully detailed here, as well as those camera angles, lighting effects, and story lines that characterize Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, and Orson Welles as noir directors.For the current rediscovery of film noir, this comprehensive history with its list of credits to 112 outstanding films and its many illustrations will be a valuable reference and a source of inspiration for further research.
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.
Footsteps in the Fog is a celebration of the San Francisco films of Alfred Hitchcock. The master director's familiarity with Northern California greatly influenced his decision to use Bay Area locations in several of his landmark motion pictures, and more importantly was often the source of inspiration for many of these same cinema classics. Three of Hitchcock's masterpieces were set in the San Francisco area: Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, and The Birds. In addition, Rebecca, Suspicion, Marnie, Topaz, Psycho, and Family Plot utilized Bay Area locations and/or were inspired by Northern California events and settings. Footsteps in the Fog examines these famous films, taking the reader on a journey around the Bay Area, while weaving together cinemagraphic intrigue, Bay Area history and lore, and the timeless elegance of San Francisco and its picturesque surroundings. Over 400 historical and contemporary photos are featured in the book, including impromptu off-camera images and shots from the films themselves—many never before seen! Footsteps in the Fog can be used as a companion to viewing the Northern California Hitchcock films, as a guide for visiting the sites and settings used in these motion pictures, and as a source of biographical information about Alfred Hitchcock's personal connections to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Hitchcock loved Northern California; he often entertained Hollywood celebrities at his ranch and vineyard outside of Santa Cruz, and frequented such San Francisco institutions as Jack's Restaurant, the Fairmont Hotel, the Top of the Mark, and the historic Bercut Brothers' Grant Market. Hitchcock fans everywhere will rejoice as they revisit and rediscover the locations and settings used in the great director's most beloved films.