What is the best way to live? For millennia, philosophers, poets and priests have scratched and clawed at this central human question—and for all of it, it might seem we’ve hardly budged an inch. How to live and love is a central theme within Hitchcock’s films as well. The wisdom they contain is ...

In the director’s premier film, 1925’s silent "The Pleasure Garden," we indeed learn something useful, even meaningful, about life and love as Hitchcock’s protagonists turn travails into opportunities, not for greed and covetousness, but for emotional growth—and perhaps even love.

Marc is Profes...

Hitchcock’s villains often contrast, deepen and clarify the characters of his protagonists and their embodiment—often attained during the film—of true love. As these antagonists illustrate negatively, love has to do with giving, not taking; with self-abnegation rather than assertion of ego.

Lesl...

Thomas Leitch moderates audience Q&A with presenters Joel Gunz, Marc Strauss, and Lesley Brill.

Thomas Leitch is the author of "Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games" and "The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock," co-editor of "The Companion to Alfred Hitchcock." Professor of English and Unid...

Publicly, Hitch joked about his rotund figure, even integrating it into his personal brand. But privately, his weight was a source of lifelong distress. He once expressed these feelings to a biographer, and this film brings his words to life, contrasting them with rarely-seen Hitchcock family hom...

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” This line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, recited in “The Trouble with Harry”, could refer both to the couples in the quartet of films that John Michael Hayes scripted for Alfred Hitchcock and to their collaboration itself. This present...

Hitchcock cited Young and Innocent (1937) as his personal favorite among his 23 British films.

Here, Lane reassess its lessons in love and lends insight into the creative relationship between Hitchcock and screenwriter-producer Joan Harrison, who was just coming into her own as his collaborator,...

Marc Strauss moderates audience Q&A with presenters Steven DeRosa, Rebecca Asghar, and Christina Lane.

Hitchcock’s women hit the road, incite action, solve mysteries, and bring the guilty to justice. Their stakes are high, their desires run deep. This talk quells the misbegotten grumblings of misogyny that have dogged critiques of the man who was among the most feminist of 20th century artists—and...

Two very unconventional women occupy the heart of Marnie and The Naked Kiss (both 1964): Tippi Hedren’s trauma-scarred compulsive thief Marnie and Constance Towers’ sex worker Kelly. Both live outside the “norm” of what’s considered acceptable behavior for a woman—and both films chronicle the pro...

Made during a time of crisis during Hitchcock’s life, Marnie (1964) is one of the director’s saddest, most profound and personal works. Drawing on never-before-published quotes from Tony’s personal interviews with the writers behind the film, this presentation will consider how their childhood up...

Christine Madrid French moderates audience Q&A with presenters Elisabeth Karlin, Sarah Nichols, and Tony Lee Moral.

When the Smiths’ reliably posh existence is shaken by a legal MacGuffin, they find themselves in a new field of play, scrambling to redesign their rules of love. Ever the master gamesman (and hopeless romantic), Hitchcock puts his own—and only—spin on screwball comedy here, deconstructing the con...

Hitchcock’s films are often described as nightmares. Referring to both his characters and his audience, the director himself famously announced his intention to “put them through it,” and romantic love either does—or does not—awaken his characters from the plots the director has foisted on them. ...

Joel Gunz moderates audience Q&A with presenters Elizabeth Bullock, Douglas A. Cunningham, and Thomas Leitch.

This conference, held in the fall, seems to be a perfect occasion to talk about Hitchcock’s insistently autumnal film, which is very much a picture of a “love nest,” a term suggesting both the pleasures and the problems of love. Gottlieb will explore some relevant interpretive contexts that will ...

Of Hitchcock’s unrealized projects, No Bail for the Judge (c. 1959) is the one that came closest to actual production. This presentation asks “What if?” to shed light on where the film would fit in the Hitchcock canon had it been made. While there are clear links to Hitchcock’s previous father-da...

Hitchcock once remarked that North by Northwest is “the American 39 Steps.” However, while we don’t know much about the backgrounds of Richard Hannay or Pamela in the earlier film, we do learn some salient details about Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendall. This talk will shed light on how Hitchcock a...

This presentation will draw on the research and analysis presented in White’s recently published BFI Film Classic book on Hitchcock's first American film and second Daphne du Maurier adaptation, Rebecca (2021). It will explore "Rebecca's Women" in multiple senses, touching on du Maurier and the m...

Marc Strauss moderates audience Q&A with presenters Steven DeRosa, Walter Raubicheck, and Patricia White.

Marc Strauss is Professor Emeritus in the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance, Holland College of Arts & Media, Southeast Missouri State University and author of "Alfred Hitchcock’s Si...

Alfred Hitchcock was a consummate surrealist filmmaker. As such, he followed in a tradition reaching back to late 19th century Romantic and Symbolist art and, earlier, to the work of Edgar Allan Poe. In this talk, Joel retraces that history to show how it culminated, in a sense, in the Surrealist...

This documentary about Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 surrealist thriller Spellbound goes off script when its director receives some unexpected news.

Spellbound (1945) achieved quick and lasting notoriety by means of its dream sequences designed by the great Surrealist Salvador Dalí. Ironically, howeve...

For Hitchcock, the parts of a building represent humanity and all its complications: windows are the eyes into the soul, a stairway is a spine between the heart and mind, and a door permits entry into infinite subliminal perceptions. This presentation investigates Hitchcock’s own love for America...

As depicted in mainstream Hollywood films, love is a conventionally romantic experience that must end happily ever after. But it can also involve jealousy, infatuation, competitiveness, loyalty, lust, people falling out of love, supporting each other, and even murder. The love triangle in "Under ...