The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures

Shortly after Donald Spoto completed his book, Alfred Hitchcock read the book and then had a lunch with the author. He agreed with almost everything in the book about Spoto's scholarly approach to the movies Hitchcock directed. If you ever want to study the master's work, watch one of his movies and then read the chapter devoted to that movie (almost all of his movies are featured in this book) and you'll learn stuff you did not know. That's what makes this a good book. Now . . . Spoto did write a second book on Hitchcock, a biography, but avoid that because there is so many mistakes and many people who worked with Hitchcock personally on his movies lost friendships with other actors and technicians that it's best to avoid that book. But this one is one of the three must-reads devoted to Hitchcock.

(The other two must-reads are the Francois Traffaut book and Grams and Wikstrom's "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion". Together with these two and this book, you have the essential library and all-you-really-need references for all things Hitchcock.)

Good book, a little long. Gives plenty of details on Hitchock's projects. Good reference book.

This is not a biography but rather a discussion of each of Hitchcock's films. For each film there is:
- Detailed synopsis
- Cast and Crew details
- Analysis of the film

These first two of these items can be obtained from the Internet for free and who really wants to know the details of the story anyway?
The analysis of each film is largely a waste of time as Spoto tends to over-analyse each film to the point of distraction while offering no real insights.

If you want to find out more about Hitchcock's films I would recommend McGilligan's excellent biography. This discusses each film in the context of Hitchcock's life and career and is far more illuminating.

While this book covers all of his works, it doesn't cover any of them in any depth. Each chapter is mostly an incomplete synopsis of the plot, followed by an very abbreviated analysis. The analyses are shallow and vary greatly in their acumen.

Wonderful book and seller. Thank you!!
Joan