Hitchcock Lost and Found: The Forgotten Films

Description

ISBN: 9780813160825; Hardcover
266 pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in, 107 b&w photos, 6 charts

Hitchcock Lost and Found
The Forgotten Films
by Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr

Foreword by Philip French

Known as the celebrated director of critical and commercial successes such as Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), Alfred Hitchcock is famous for his distinctive visual style and signature motifs. While recent books and articles discussing his life and work focus on the production and philosophy of his iconic Hollywood-era films like Notorious (1946) and Vertigo (1958), Hitchcock Lost and Found moves beyond these seminal works to explore forgotten, incomplete, lost, and recovered productions from all stages of his career, including his early years in Britain.

Authors Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr highlight Hitchcock’s neglected works, including various films and television productions that supplement the critical attention already conferred on his feature films. They also explore the director’s career during World War II, when he continued making high-profile features while also committing himself to a number of short war-effort projects on both sides of the Atlantic. Focusing on a range of forgotten but fascinating projects spanning five decades, Hitchcock Lost and Found offers a new, fuller perspective on the filmmaker’s career and achievements.

Alain Kerzoncuf is the author of several articles on Hitchcock’s work and was interviewed for the bonus features on the French DVD releases of Dial M for Murder and North by Northwest in 2007.

Charles Barr is the author of Vertigo (from the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series) and English Hitchcock, as well as the editor of All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema. He serves on the editorial board of the US-based journal Hitchcock Annual.

Book Reviews:

    “In addition to the pleasures it will surely afford readers, Hitchcock Lost and Found renders the Hitchcock community a signal service by setting such a high bar for future scholarship on the Master of Suspense.” — Thomas Leitch, author of The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock

    “An extremely valuable and well-executed book. Kerzoncuf and Barr report their findings in an accessible, authoritative, and engaging way and are well-versed in relevant critical work on Hitchcock, which they skillfully use as a guide when evaluating the uses of their discoveries. Hitchcock Lost and Found adds substantially to the effort to gain a truly comprehensive understanding of the full range of Hitchcock’s activities and achievements.” — Sidney Gottlieb, editor of Hitchcock Annual

    “With an attention to detail and a love of the archive that is particularly appealing to the audiences of master planner Alfred Hitchcock, the authors have given us a jewel of investigative work. Hitchcock Lost and Found reveals his varied roles in the recently recovered ‘lost silent films’ he was associated with but didn’t necessarily direct, and also illuminates the importance of the ‘lost histories’ of his professional networks extending decades after his apprentice years. A thoroughly reliable book of original scholarship essential for libraries, scholars, connoisseurs and the general public.” — Janet Bergstrom, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA

    “For the Hitchcock completist, Hitchcock Lost and Found is an essential resource.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

    “Overall, Hitchcock Lost and Found delivers a thorough examination of little-known components of the Hitchcock oeuvre. The monograph remains compelling reading for those interested in the details of the director’s most obscure, but always compelling, work.” — Journal of Popular Film and TV

    “An important contribution to Hitchcock scholarship covering various important aspects of his 1930s and postwar American career as well as the early years and the 1940s…. Kerzoncuf and Barr clearly indicate that there is plenty of life left in the subject [of Hitchcock], especially when it is based upon the high standard of diligent and imaginative archival research exemplified in Hitchcock Lost and Found.” — Journal of British Cinema and Television

    “Despite being one of the most written about filmmakers of all time, it seems there is still plenty to discover and to say about Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock Lost and Found pulls together a host of impressive new research into the murkier areas of Hitchcock’s filmography: the missing, rediscovered, and generally forgotten or overlooked works on the margins of his feature film career. The book presents a rich buffet of choice morsels, which, when put together, make up a varied but satisfying meal.” — Journal of Film Preservation

    “This welcome book is a detective story, a reference work, and a model for the study ofincomplete and missing films.” — Silent London

    “[A]n essential book for any serious Hitchcock fan and both authors are to be thoroughly congratulated for unearthing so much new content from the archives.” — The Hitchcock Zone

    “In this fascinating and absorbing book [the authors’] analysis ranges over almost all of Hitchcock’s long career, paying particular attention to those ‘transitional moments’ from which the lost, overlooked and forgotten materials tends to merge. This book will be of great benefit not only to Hitchcock scholars and teachers — by revealing in such detail the origins of the director’s distinctive practice — but to those interested in film archives and history, as well as the national cinemas of Britain and the USA from the earliest days of the 1920s up to the 1970s: that is, cinema’s and Hitchcock’s crucial half-century.” — Viewfinder

    “In summary, the research is impeccable, its results exciting and the whole is written with immaculate clarity. This is the new Hitchcock book you need…. The serious student of Hitchcock’s career will lap up the new insights into his contributions to silent films.” — Screen Education

    “For the more strictly cinematic sort of genius which everyone agrees Hitchcock had, the best bets are [… ] the exploration of the lesser-known byways of his long career, Hitchcock Lost and Found, by Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr.” — Claremont Review

    “Just when everyone thought that the subject of Alfred Hitchcock had been picked clean to the bone, we are offered this incredibly enlightening effort. Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr have given fans and scholars an incredible gift. Their original research and lucid writing makes for an enjoyable reading experience. Hitchcock Lost and Found: The Forgotten Films is extremely easy to recommend without any qualifiers.” — hitchcockmaster.wordpress.com

    “In their fascinating Hitchcock Lost and Found: The Forgotten Films, cinema scholars Alain Kerzoncuf and Charles Barr do what their title promises, burrowing deep into the archives to gather evidence on items from the tantalizing margins of Hitchcock’s filmography.” — Hitchcock Annual