The contributors bring to bear an unrivaled enthusiasm and theoretical sweep on the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, analyzing movies such as Rear Window and Psycho. Starting from the premise that ‘everything has meaning,’ the authors examine the films’ ostensible narrative content and formal procedures to discover a rich proliferation of hidden ideological and psychic mechanisms. But Hitchcock is also a bait to lure the reader into a serious Marxist and Lacanian exploration of the construction of meaning.

An extraordinary landmark in Hitchcock studies, this new edition features a brand-new essay by philosopher Slavoj Žižek, presenter of Sophie Fiennes’s three-part documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.