Hitchcock's Notebooks: An Authorized And Illustrated Look Inside The Creative Mind Of Alfred Hitchcock - Softcover

Auiler, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380799456 ISBN 13: 9780380799459

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2001

Synopsis

From a couple racing across the top of Mount Rushmore to a woman's final shower at an isolated motel, no other filmmaker has given movie fans more unforgettable images or heart-pounding thrills than Alfred Hitchcock. Now you can share in the Master of Suspense's inspiration and development -- his entire creative process -- in Hitchcock's Notebooks.

With the complete cooperation of the Hitchcock estate and access to the director's notebooks, journals, and archives, Dan Auiler takes you from the very beginnings of story creation to the master's final touches during post-production and publicity. Actual production notes from Hitchcock's masterpieces join detailed interviews with key production personnel, including writers, actors and actresses, and Hitchcock's personal assistant of more than thirty years.

Mirroring the director's working methods to give you the actual feel of his process, and highlighted by nearly nearly one hundred photographs and illustrations, this is the definitive guide into the mind of a cinematic legend.

About this title

Review

Dan Auiler is undoubtedly the luckiest Alfred Hitchcock devotee alive. With the permission of the director's family, he sifted through the Hitchcock archives at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create a multifaceted portrait of the artist at work. If this book has a fault, it's that the sheer mass of information makes it a little hard to digest; but taken in small doses, its richness becomes a virtue, offering unique insights into the complicated processes that led to some of the greatest movies ever made.

Auiler divides the creative act into three parts: "Building the Screenplay," "Preparing the Visual," and "Putting It All Together." In each section he provides documents, including memos, script excerpts, sketches, and storyboards from a selection of films. Most interesting are those relating to Kaleidoscope a project from the late '60s that, Auiler contends, would have been a groundbreaking film had the studio not forced Hitchcock to abandon it. This collection also gives full credit to Alma Reville, the director's wife and lifelong collaborator, and her influence on the development of Hitchcock's style is evident throughout. Other gems include a transcript of discussions between Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren about her character in The Birds and a set of production stills from an early, lost movie, The Mountain Eagle.

There's an enormous amount to take in, but what quickly emerges is a sense of Hitchcock's meticulous approach to crafting a film. He frequently sent script treatments to other writers and filmmakers, asking for their critical comments, and Auiler reproduces several of these correspondences, including François Truffaut's detailed analysis of Kaleidoscope. At the other end of the creative journey the book closes with the script for an unproduced Spellbound trailer in which Hitchcock playfully evokes the magic of movies: "That screen up there is like a mind ... we here in Hollywood can make anything happen there." Hitchcock's Notebooks is a testament to the powerful vision and sheer hard work that lay behind that magic. --Simon Leake

About the Author

Dan Auiler is the author of Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic, which the Washington Post called "savvy and mesmerizing" and Entertainment Weekly awarded an "A-." He began as a film critic for a Texas weekly and has taught cinema and drama courses for more than a decade. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0380799456
• ISBN 13: 9780380799459
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576