One Shot Hitchcock

Abstract

Abstract One Shot Hitchcock: A Contemporary Approach to the Screen is an edited collection that uses close formal analysis to interrogate key single shots from across Alfred Hitchcock’s long career that spans American, British, and German production. This collection reveals the value of analyzing the single shot. Encapsulated within this small, cinematic unit is a code that unlocks a series of revelations about, broadly, cinema as an artistic practice and a theoretical study, and, specifically, the filmmaker’s choices. Each chapter takes one shot from a single film, beginning with The Lodger (1927) and ending with Frenzy (1972). Each chapter uses a different “lens” of film analysis: transnationalism, gender and sexuality, performance, history, affect, intermediality, re-make studies, film and philosophy, and film form are all used to interrogate single shots from Hitchcock’s films. In these essays a single shot from a Hitchcock film not only illustrates the approach in question but also demonstrates how the single shot encourages us to rethink our approaches to the screen and screen culture. One Shot Hitchcock is an essential resource for understanding approaches to the screen. By reinvigorating a close formal mode of analysis, this collection asks readers to think differently about film, and it offers a renewed assessment of Hitchcock’s oeuvre.