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This collection of essays examines the various Hitchcock films that were adapted from other sources (short stories, play, and novels). Some of these essays focus on the director's collaboration with such notable writers as John Steinbeck (Lifeboat), Thornton Wilder (Shadow of a Doubt), and Raymond Chandler (Strangers on a Train), proving not only that Hitchcock knew good writing when he read it, but that he was quite eager to exploit the cultural capital that these writers represented. Other essays discuss to what extent he was faithful (or not) to the source materials, his relationship with screenwriters/adaptors such as Joseph Stefano (Psycho), and what role his wife, Alma Reville played in the development of several screenplays.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Hitchcock and Adaptation, Mark Osteen
I: Hitchcock and Authorship
Chapter 1: Hitchcock the Author, Thomas M. Leitch
Chapter 2: Wrong Men on the Run: The 39 Steps as Hitchcock's Espionage Paradigm, Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick
Chapter 3: The Role and Presence of Authorship in Suspicion, Patrick Faubert
II. Hitchcock Adapting
Chapter 4: Melancholy Elephants: Hitchcock and Ingenious Adaptation, Ken Mogg
Chapter 5: Conrad's The Secret Agent, Hitchcock's Sabotage, and The Inspiration of "Public Uneasiness," Matthew Paul Carlson
Chapter 6: Stranger(s) Than Fiction: Adaptation, Modernity, and the Menace of Fan Culture in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, Leslie H. Abramson
Chapter 7: Reading Hitchcock/Reading Queer: Adaptation, Narrativity, and a Queer Mode of Address in Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho, Heath A. Diehl
Chapter 8: "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts": Voyeurism and the Spectacle of Human Suffering in Rear Window, Nicholas Andrew Miller
Chapter 9: "The Proper Geography": Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds," John Bruns
Chapter 10: From Kaleidoscope to Frenzy: Hitchcock's Second British Homecoming, Tony Williams
III. Hitching a Ride: The Collaborations
Chapter 11: Hitchcock's Diegetic Imagination: Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt, and Hitchcock's Mise-en-Scène, Donna Kornhaber
Chapter 12: "The Name of Hitchcock! The Fame of Steinbeck!"-The Legacy of Lifeboat, Maria A. Judnick
Chapter 13: "What did Alma Think?":Continuity, Writing, Editing, and Adaptation, Christina Lane and Jo Botting
IV. Adapting Hitchcock
Chapter 14: The Second Look, the Second Death: W. G. Sebald's Orphic Adaptation of Hitchcock's Vertigo, Russell J. A. Kilbourn
Chapter 15: Dark Adaptations: Robert Bloch and Hitchcock on the Small Screen, Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm
Chapter 16: Extraordinary Renditions: DeLillo's Point Omega and Hitchcock's Psycho, Mark Osteen
Chapter 17: The Culture of Spectacle in American Psycho, David Seed
Alfred Hitchcock Filmography
About the Contributors
About the Editor
About the author
Mark Osteen is chair of the English Department and cofounder of the Film Studies Program at Loyola University Maryland. He has published dozens of articles on film, music, and modern literature and is the author or editor of ten books, including One of Us: A Family's Life with Autism (2010) and Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream (2013).
