Is Hitchcock a superficial though brilliant entertainer or a moralist? Do hisfilms celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a newinterpretation of... » 

Is Hitchcock a superficial though brilliant entertainer or a moralist? Do hisfilms celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a newinterpretation of the directors work Richard Allen argues that Hitchcockorchestrates the narrative and stylistic idioms of popular cinema to at oncecelebrate and subvert the ideal of romance and to forge a distinctiveworldviewthe amoral outlook of the romantic ironist or aesthete. He describesin detail how Hitchcocks characteristic tone is achieved through a titillatingcombination of suspense and black humor that subverts the moral framework ofthe romantic thriller and a meticulous approach to visual style thatarticulates the lure of human perversity even as the ideal of romance is beingdeliriously affirmed. Discussing more than thirty films from the directorsEnglish and American periods Allen explores the filmmakers adoption of theidioms of late romanticism his orchestration of narrative point of view andsuspense and his distinctive visual strategies of aestheticism andexpressionism and surrealism. «