Hitchcock Entrapped: Early Criticism of the “Rear Window” and the Figure of a Modern Artist
Abstract
The subject of the article is the early reception of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and its relationship with the transformation of the image of the director at the end of the 1950s. At that time, first in Europe and later in the United States, Hitchcock was increasingly perceived as a fully-fledged artist, not just a “master of suspense”. In the first part of the article the character of the film promotion accompanying the premiere of the Rear Window is reconstructed as is the reaction of American film critics. The reading of the film in the context of cinema entertainment and thriller is contrasted with its French reception. The author cites articles by François Truffaut and Andre Bazin published in “Cahiers du cinéma” and “Arts”, which place an accent on the artistic, self-referential (and thus also modernist) aspect of the Rear Window. Next the author analyses how, in the early 1960s Hitchcock and the people around him used French criticism in order to raise the position of the director in America. The problem of transforming the image of Hitchcock-the-entertainer into Hitchcock-the-artist is contrasted with the transformation that takes place in his later films, and the situation of the suspense genre in the early 1960s.
Keywords:
Alfred Hitchcock, French criticisim, François Truffaut, André BazinReferences
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Authors
Konrad Niemirakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
University of Warsaw Poland
Studiował historię sztuki na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim i Universite Paul Valery w Montpellier. W 2015 r. rozpoczął studia doktoranckie na Wydziale Historycznym Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Zajmuje się kulturą czasów zimnej wojny (w Polsce, Francji i Stanach Zjednoczonych) oraz sztuką XVIII w. Teksty poświęcone kinu publikował w kwartalniku „Rzut” oraz „Kulturze Liberalnej”.
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