Alfred Hitchcock: Cinema on the Edge of Nothing

Milan: Skira, 2019. Pictorial boards, 149 pages, illustrations (some colour); 29 cm. Translation of: Alfred Hitchcock: il cinema ai bordi del nulla. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museo della grafica, Pisa, Italy, April 7 to September 1, 2019. Firm binding, clean inside copy. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Profusely illustrated. "Despite the particularly short-sighted and obtuse critics who for years have considered Hitchcock merely a lover of useless and dangerous toys, a puritanical, complex fat man who was also obsessed with crime, blood and sex, he has revealed to us that the ordered world we thought we lived in is nothing but a formless chaos and that its apparent order is only a mask continually destined to crumble. [.] There is a sort of lucid, vertiginous and disorienting nihilism in Hitchcock's cinema. It puts our greedy fat man, the one who claimed to offer his audience tranches de ga^teau rather than tranches de vie, not only among the greatest creators of forms in the twentieth century [.] but also among the leading exponents of the culture of crisis, which, as Truffaut noted, sets him as alongside other "artists of anxiety" such as Kafka, Dostoevsky and Poe. [.] Hitchcock is one of them, the bearer of a vision that forces us all to look at ourselves in the mirror, and also to see what we would prefer not to see. Even the nothingness embedded in our names and in our identitites, even the emptiness and the cold of our bedrooms."--Back cover. "The book is a fascinating journey through the portrait of this famous filmmaker, the master of suspense and thrillers, thanks to an analysis of the first so-called "special effects", today essential to so much contemporary cinema. It explores the psychology of the characters, the most memorable scenes and Alfred Hitchcock's personality; what emerges is the portrait of an extraordinary filmmaker who was able to tackle gloomy topics and manage our fears without forgetting irony, a fundamental component to his entire existence." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Hitchcock, the bedroom and the fascination of nothing, by Gianni Canova; Hitchcock and the persistence of objects, by Antonio Costa; The blonde, a perfect crime, by Piera Detassis; Food and imposture: Hitchcock and the act of eating as dissimulation, by Stefano Locati; Hitch and the beast, or how Sir Alfred was afraid of the animal inside us, by Giorgio Gosetti; Notes on colour in Hitchcock's cinema, by Elena Gipponi; Hitchcock and art, by Leonardo Capano; A complex relationship: Hitchcock and Universal Pictures, by Stefano Locati; Films. Rope, 1948; Rear window, 1954; Vertigo, 1958; Psycho, 1960; The birds, 1963; Marnie, 1964.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine. 4to. Collectible.