Clues 31.1: Hitchcock and adaptation.

"Hitchcock and Adaptation" is the theme of Clues 31.1 (2013), guest edited by Loyola Univ Maryland's Mark Osteen (author of Nightmare Alley: Film Noir and the American Dream). The following is a summary of the contents (with links on the article titles). To order the issue or subscribe to Clues, visit this Web page or download the subscription flyer.

Introduction. MARK OSTEEN

Melancholy Elephants: Hitchcock and Ingenious Adaptation. KEN MOGG Alfred Hitchcock films such as Marnie and Young and Innocent represent a world that is equivocal. Highly ingenious and imaginative, they enable the spectator, much like the character Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest, to re-engage with that world and come “alive.”

"Inspiring Public Uneasiness": Hitchcock's Adaptation of Conrad's "Simple Tale." MATTHEW PAUL CARLSON (High Point Univ, NC) In Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936; adapted from Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, 1907), the director goes beyond mere use of the novel as a point of departure; he deeply engages its underlying anxieties about the artist’s relationship to his audience.

Reading Hitchcock/Reading Queer: Adaptation, Narrativity, and a Queer Mode of Address in Rope, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho. HEATH A. DIEHL (Bowling Green State Univ) Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951) reveal an interest in the odd; the peculiar; the “queer.” The author examines the narrative choices made in adaptation.

"Dear Miss Lonelyhearts": Voyeurism and the Spectacle of Human Suffering in Rear Window. NICHOLAS ANDREW MILLER (Loyola Univ Maryland) Rear Window offers a powerful meditation on the ethical implications of private voyeurism in the public sphere. The film draws thematic inspiration from Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts.

"The Proper Geography": Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds." JOHN BRUNS (College of Charleston) Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” illuminates the technical aspects of his process of adaptation, much-ignored similarities between du Maurier’s text and Hitchcock’s film, and the anxiogenics of spatial dislocation.

Hitchcock's Diegetic Imagination: Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt, and Hitchcock's Mise-en-Scene. DONNA KORNHABER (UT-Austin) The author considers the collaboration between Thornton Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and examines the influence of Wilder’s theories of theatrical abstraction and cinematic realism on Hitchcock’s developing sense of mise-en-scène.

The Second Look, the Second Death: W. G. Sebald's Orphic Adaptation of Hitchcock's Vertigo. R. J. A. KILBOURN (Wilfred Laurier Univ, Canada) This essay compares W. G. Sebald’s novel Vertigo (1991) and Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. The book extends key themes and formal strategies in the film, most notably Hitchcock’s famous “vertigo shot.”

Adapting Poe, Adapting Hitchcock: Robert Bloch in the Shadow of Hitchcock's Television Empire. DENNIS R. PERRY and CARL H. SEDERHOLM (both Brigham Young Univ) Alfred Hitchcock’s television programs challenged adaptors to transfer his style and persona to the small screen. Robert Bloch invoked his own and Hitchcock’s deep interest in Poe to create episodes that tended to be more dark, ironic, and psychologically edgy than others.

Extraordinary Renditions: DeLillo's Point Omega and Hitchcock's Psycho. MARK OSTEEN Tracing how Don DeLillo’s novella rings changes on the word rendition, the author unravels a skein of intertextual and metacinematic relations that stretches from Psycho to Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho video installation, Robert Bloch’s original novel, and the many Psycho remakes.

REVIEWS
Susan M. Griffin and Alan Nadel, eds. The Men Who Knew Too Much: Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock. PAMELA BEDORE

R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, eds. Hitchcock at the Source: The Auteur as Adaptor. JOHN TEEL