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Must We Kill the Thing We Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock

William Rothman

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Description for Must We Kill the Thing We Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock Hardback. Series: Film and Culture Series. Num Pages: 320 pages, B&W Photos: 111. BIC Classification: APFB; HPN. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 229 x 152 x 20. Weight in Grams: 454.
William Rothman argues that the driving force of Hitchcock's work was his struggle to reconcile the dark vision of his favorite Oscar Wilde quote, "Each man kills the thing he loves," with the quintessentially American philosophy, articulated in Emerson's writings, that gave classical Hollywood movies of the New Deal era their extraordinary combination of popularity and artistic seriousness. A Hitchcock thriller could be a comedy of remarriage or a melodrama of an unknown woman, both Emersonian genres, except for the murderous villain and godlike author, Hitchcock, who pulls the villain's strings-and ours. Because Hitchcock believed that the camera has a ... Read more

Product Details

Format

Hardback

Publication date

2014

Publisher

Columbia University Press United States

Number of pages

320

Condition

New

Series

Film and Culture Series

Number of Pages

320

Place of Publication

New York, United States

ISBN

9780231166027

SKU

V9780231166027

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days

Ref

99-1

About William Rothman

William Rothman is professor of cinema and interactive media at the University of Miami. An expanded edition of his landmark study Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze was published in 2012. His other books include The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics, Documentary Film Classics, and Reading Cavell's The World Viewed: A Philosophical Perspective on Film.

Reviews for Must We Kill the Thing We Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock

In his seminal book, The Murderous Gaze, Rothman emerged as a central voice in the study of Hitchcock with his probing and fine-grained analysis of the filmmaker's style and deep interpretations of his work. This new project builds on the critical premises of his earlier work but modifies its predominantly ironic view of Hitchcock. Here Rothman argues with critical verve ... Read morethat Hitchcock's films also contain a redemptive vision of the perfectibility of human nature.
Richard Allen, author of Hitchcock's Romantic Irony and co-editor of The Hitchcock Annual Rothman entered the field of film study as a maverick, as a Harvard philosopher, at a time when most film classes were taught in literature and language departments, though he has been vindicated in the last decade by a proliferation of philosophical approaches to cinema. While Rothman draws his examples from all across the Hitchcock canon, his work remains resolutely and productively philosophical in that he grapples with the history of Hitchcock's thinking about film, his thinking with and through film. In tracking Hitchcock's ruminations on love, murder, and mortality Rothman both deepens and illuminates our understanding of Hitchcock's continued and uncanny appeal.
Leland Poague, Iowa State University In this glittering homage to Emerson, Cavell, and the Master of Suspense, one of our most learned scholars of film opens new pathways to understanding Hitchcock's work as penetrating, provocative, labyrinthine, and exquisitely mortal.
Murray Pomerance, Author of The Eyes Have It: Cinema and the Reality Effect Nobody knows the films of Alfred Hitchcock better than William Rothman. The idea of linking these wonderful and dense films with an Emersonian vision is inspired. Rothman's training in philosophy combines lucidly with his lifelong devotion to film in producing a work of originality and authority.
Stanley Cavell, Harvard University William Rothman, who wrote the remarkable Hitchcock: The Murdeous Gaze, now takes a revisionary Emersonian view and seeks to enlist the devilish master of suspense on the side of the angels.
Gilberto Perez, Sarah Lawrence College William Rothman is one of the great close readers of film... In his new book, Must We Kill the Thing We Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Rothman again performs virtuoso acts of close viewing... An important contribution to Hitchcock scholarship.
David Banash Screen [Rothman's] interpretations are always insightful (and backed up by close readings of cinematic technique) and his demonstration of the relevance of Emerson to Hitchcock is philosophy of film at its best.
Daniel Shaw New Review of Film and Television Studies Show Less

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Must We Kill the Thing We Love?: Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock

William Rothman

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