Hitchcocks Cryptonymies v1

Tom Cohens radical exploration of Hitchcocks cinema departs from conventional approachespsychoanalytic, feminist, politicalto emphasize the dense web of signatures and markings inscribed on and around his films. Aligning Hitchcocks agenda with the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Benjamin, Cohen's project dramatically recasts the history and meaning of cinema itself.This first volume of Hitchcocks Cryptonymies provides a singularly close reading of films such as The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, and North by Northwest, exposing the often imperceptible visual and aural puns, graphic elements, and cryptograms that traverse his entire body of work. Within Hitchcocks cinema, Cohen argues, these "secret agents" have more than just decorative or symbolic significance; they also reflect, critique, and disrupt traditional cinematic practice, undermining ways of seeing inherited from the Enlightenment and prefiguring postmodern culture. From the recurrence of the eye motif and the frequency of names beginning with "Mar" to the role of memory and the directors trademark cameos, Cohen offers an unprecedented guide to the entirety of Hitchcocks labyrinthine signature system. At the same time, he liberates Hitchcocks works from film history (modernist, auteurist), revealing them as unsettled events in the archaeology of contemporary global image culture.Tom Cohen is professor of American literary, critical, and cinematic studies at the University at Albany. He is the author of Anti-Mimesis: From Plato to Hitchcock and Ideology and Inscription: Cultural Studies after Benjamin, and coeditor of Material Events (Minnesota, 2000).