Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony

It is my pleasure to thank the many people who have helped bring this book to fruition. First, I wish to thank my film teachers, all of whom taught me about Hitchcock and some of whom are Hitchcock scholars in their own right: Charles Barr, Don Ranvaud, and Thomas Elsaesser at the University of East Anglia; Janet Bergstrom, Nick Browne, and Steve Mamber at UCLA. At an early stage in my study of Hitchcock, the late Bill Everson shared his enthusiasm and his wonderful 16mm prints. Ann Harris, Cathy Holter, and Mai Kiang in the George Amberg Study Center at New York University have facilitated my research in numerous ways. Funds for the research and publication of this book have been provided in the form of Faculty Development Grants from the Tisch School of the Arts, and I thank Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell and Dean Randy Martin for their support. My work has also been sustained by the constant support and encouragement of the former Chair of Department, Chris Straayer. I thank Bill Simon for allowing me to poach his teaching territory and for the many undergraduate and graduate students who, over the years, have shared my enthusiasm for Hitchcock and contributed to the development of my thought.

Among the individuals who have invited me to speak or publish on Hitchcock, and who have contributed conversation and criticism, I wish to thank David Bordwell, James Chandler, Peter Evans, Ben Gibson, Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen, Andrea Kern, Tom Leitch, Adam Lowenstein, Annette Michelson, Patrick McGilligan, Brian Price, Alessandra Raengo, Walter Raubicheck, John David Rhodes, Steven Schneider, Ben Singer, Murray Smith, Walter Srebnick, Robert Stam, Ravi Vasudevan, Rebecca Walkowitz, Thomas Wartenberg, Susan White, Federico Windhausen, and Slavoj Žižek. I am especially grateful to the late Joe Stefano and Evan Hunter for extended conversations on their collaboration with Hitchcock.

Several people have played a significant role in the development of my arguments. I benefited, in the early stages, from conversations with Sam Ishii-Gonzales, who collaborated with me on two Hitchcock anthologies; Malcolm Turvey read with his customary acuity early drafts of chapter 1 and helped me to clarify the conceptual foundations of my argument; Phil Kennedy inspired me to write chapter 3, and I have benefited from my conversations with him on the topic of recognition in storytelling; Ira Bhaskar shared her wide knowledge of romantic literature and sharpened my understanding of romanticism and expressionism at a key phase of the project; Ken Mogg has saved me over the years from countless errors and supplied more useful references than I could possibly incorporate into this book; Sid Gottlieb thoughtfully criticized (and proofread!) many drafts of my work and has proved an inestimable colleague throughout our collaboration on the Hitchcock Annual and in the classroom; Columbia University Press’s Film and Culture series editor John Belton read drafts of the first three chapters, and I benefited from his rigorous and unsparing criticism of them; Elizabeth Weis provided helpful suggestions on the manuscript as I embarked upon a final draft; and by reading the entire work at a late stage, my colleague Dana Polan expedited final completion. However, my greatest debt is to my friend and colleague, Bill Paul. Bill carefully read two versions of this manuscript and on both occasions gave me pages of insightful suggestions about structure and content that contributed substantially to the argument of each chapter and to the improvement of the whole. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for the faults that remain.

I am particularly grateful to my editor at Columbia University Press, Jennifer Crewe, for providing such a hospitable environment for this book, and I also wish to thank the rest of the editorial team: Juree Sondker, Anne McCoy, and especially Roy Thomas. Thanks also to Priyadarshini Shanker for her careful proofreading, and Renata Jackson for her copious index.