The first Hitchcock is “The Master of Suspense” Hitchcock. This is the man as he wished to be seen: the Alfred Hitchcock Presents Hitchcock, the baby-faced cameo in a score of movies. A thoroughly professional maker of popular films, a family man, and a convivial host, he is by nature a practical joker, an impish lover of dark humor, the gadfly of anyone who cannot take a joke. The second Hitchcock is “The Dark Genius” Hitchcock. This is the man as lauded by Truffaut and later pictured in Donald...

For six decades, Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense and the magician of film, kept the public on the edge of their seats and is one of the most talked-about directors in film history. He began as an art director in German film during the height of that country's masterpieces and then returned to his native England and moved into the director's chair. He began to gain his reputation with the silent version of The Lodger (1926) and so it began. Several of his British films are considered cla...

I've seen Hitchcock's most well-known films, 'Pyscho', 'The Birds', 'North by Northwest', and 'Rear Window', as well as watching re-runs of his television series 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'. I realized I didn't know much about his past or who he really was until I watched the 2012 movie 'Hitchcock' which was a biopic about his making of 'Psycho'. This snapshot of Hitchcock's life created more questions in my mind, mainly on how he started out and became such an influential director in Hollywood...

I was reminded of this book just now by Jason as he's finished reading it and is going to write a review. I'm really looking forward to reading that.This is a super book of Hitchcock's life, with excellent photographs, and a true insight into his mind. He was rather unusual too.Highly recommended. My black labrador Jasper also loved it as he devoured half of the front cover of the hardback. I couldn't believe it when I saw it in his mouth. He obviously had good taste in more ways than one!

I've read at least 20 books on Hitchcock, and this is my favorite. McGilligan is thorough, even-handed, and comes to his subject with no preconceived narrative. A fantastically well-rounded bio.

3.5 starsAlfred Hitchcock was born in 1899 and died in 1980. He went from Great Britain to Hollywood and over six decades, starting with silent films in the 1920s up to only months before he died, he was working on movies, over 50 in total. He usually had two going at a time. This is a very long book (over 800 pages). I was expecting more biography, but really, it was a very detailed account of behind-the-scenes of many of his movies, with a bit of biography thrown in here and there. There were

This is a very thorough and comprehensive biography of Hitchcock, taking us from birth to death, covering the making of all fifty-three films and then some. The short review is: tiresome beginning, great middle, dreary ending.The book begins as more of a one-sided argument between the author and an earlier biographer (Spoto) that nearly caused me to book the book aside and chalk it up as a loss. Only scholars are interested in such meaningless debates. Fortunately, the author began focusing on t...

Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light is a biography of Alfred Hitchcock, an English film director, producer, and screenwriter. Patrick McGilligan, an Irish American biographer, film historian and writer wrote this biography.Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is one of the most influential and widely studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. Known as the "Master of Suspense", he directed over fifty feature films in a career spanning s...

Hitchcock is in vogue. A film about Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, is about to released. (Hopefully it will be an improvement over the tepid HBO film about Hitchcock and his obsession with Tippi Hedren, et al). This is a detailed, almost exhaustive 700-page biography about Hitchcock and his films. In some ways, the book is designed to refute the sensational Donald Spoto biography that depicts Hitchcock as disturbed, sadistic, repressed and nutty

A long but fascinating look at a great director’s life and work. The author purposefully strikes a balance between two prior biographies, the authorized biography by John Russell Taylor and the darker version of Hitchcock’s life by Donald Spoto, as he traces Hitchcock’s life and career in careful detail. Even though this is a popular biography, the author presents his evidence and lays out his conclusions about the director’s life and personality, allowing the reader to follow and question/agree...

I am marking this as read although I read only about one third of it. The writing is speculative and overly familiar. The book is much too long for the subject, well over 700 pages. I recently read another very long book which truly repaid the reader for their patience: "A. Lincoln". This book is nothing like that. It is, unfortunately, smarmy, calling Mr. Hitchcock clever little names like "the bright boy". I don't have the time or patience to invest in this. Being old and ill makes me a very a...

Beware: this one is a decent sized commitment. I love all things from the Golden Age of Hollywood, particularly the 30s, 40s, 50s, and at least the early 1960s. So it stands to reason that I would pick up an exhaustive survey of Hitchcock's life, movies, backstory, and perspectives. "A Life in Darkness" doesn't disappoint on those accounts and, in my opinion, McGilligan handles the more intimate details associated with the director's relationships with the leading ladies of his films with frankn...

I'm a big fan of McGilligan's film writing and this is one of his best. Hitchcock is a huge subject and complex subject to take on but the book is an excellent balance of storytelling, trivia and analysis of the films. Exhaustively researched, highly readable and essential to anyone interested in Hitchcock.

So comprehensive and full of the details I wanted: details about his professional life and choices. I didn’t know going in that Hitchcock’s entire life was professional, which was fascinating to read about.

Alfred Hitchcock is a director whose name and appearance are instantly recognizable. Few moviemakers who spend their time behind the cameras are so famous. Perhaps it's because Hitchcock also came in front of the camera. He had cameos in almost all of his movies (of which he made fifty-three). More significantly, he hosted a TV anthology show called Alfred Hitchcock Presents where he made introductory and closing comments, often filled with self-deprecating (and sometimes sponsor-deprecating) hu...

Though well researched, at times McGilligan's lengthy biography suffers under his implicit motivation for writing the book: to amend the Hitchcock legacy, tarnished by Donald Spoto's "Dark Side of Genius" (1983). McGilligan begins and ends "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" with warnings to the reader of Spoto's specious claims (claims, McGilligan notes, which have been refuted by people close to Hitchcock). Yet, puzzlingly, McGilligan often quotes from Spoto's work directly when h...

I'm a Hitchcock fan and I could not read this book. McGilligan seemed more interested in detailing the limitations of Hitchcock's marriage, hygiene, and quirks of character than in discussing his films or how he came to be so important a director. Yes, you get all kinds of information about the background of British film at the time and the power plays going on and the hurt feelings and the rampant drinking and partying and negotiating for new contracts and control and on and on and on...but now...

McGilligan's is an unenviable task to say the least. Books about movies have always to contend with the simple disparity in mediums, and when a medium on one hand is being revolutionized by one of the single most innovative and influential forces in film history, a daunting job becomes herculean. The very premise of this book is much of its weakness; it flirts always with the line between dissection and disfiguring. Hitchcock's movies are great because they saw the lady in half; McGilligan shows...

It's rare that I read a book more than once. Its even rarer that I re-read, in its entirety, a 750-plus page book that I only finished just 14 months prior. Yet that’s how good Patrick McGilligan’s exhaustive, intelligent, and insanely well-researched biography “Alfred Hitchcock: A Life In Darkness and Light” is. Having become an even bigger alfred Hitchcock fan since I first read the book...I was anxious to read it again...especially since it was on sale as a Kindle version (as there was no way...

Patrick McGilligan has written what is undoubtedly one of the most authoritative and exhaustive biographies of Alfred Hitchcock available today. In the process of chronicling his life, the book covers each of Hitchcock’s movies (over 50 of them!) in plenty of detail, from their inception to the critical reception of the finished product. Of course, given the amount of analysis that his movies warrant (Psycho alone has tons of books examining it), there was a limit to the depth of each movie’s co...

Entertaining biographyThis is a very balanced bio of Alfred Hitchcock. I enjoyed it very much. I've always loved North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief (yes! Cary Grant). But beyond his most famous movies, I had no idea how long and how extensive Hitchcock's career was.Long ago I read a really dark bio of Hitchcock, very off-putting. This one is more centered, realistic, balanced. The good and bad. The author is telling the story of a long and busy life. The other author's bio was written, I th...

Finally! I'll get a complete review in shortly. But this has been exhaustive, fascinating, and something like a complete class on how to construct a plot and develop characters. Only read this book if you're interested in reading about Hitchcock and a plethora of writers and producers sitting around and working out plots ad nauseam. I am one of those types, so it was enjoyable to read, as well as educational.Review to follow soon.

At a whopping 864 pages, this book is not for the faint of heart, but it's a must-read for any serious Hitchock fan. So much of Hitchcock's character and motivations were illuminated to me through this book, and it engaged in painstaking detail of the inspiration, background and production of every single movie Hitchcock ever made.

A great read..If you are a Hitchcock fan this is a must read. Tedious at first, but falls into a smooth rhythm.

Academic historians usually consider biographies as somewhat suspect sources, despite the fact (as in this case) that considerable research may go into their production. It seems that it is rare that anyone writes a biography of a subject without being very invested in admiration and fascination of that person, sometimes to the point of being a raving fan-boy or –girl. The problem is compounded when the subject is a critical darling and a celebrity, perhaps even more so when the family’s estate

McGilligan offers insightful comments about Hitchcock's psyche and what made him the premier suspense filmmaker. The book offers behind-the-scenes development of movie storytelling and casting for all 53 of his films. Although Hitch took no screenwriting credits after the early 1930s, McGilligan shows how all his motion pictures had original Hitchcock touches and quirky bits; for some, he ended up writing the majority of the picture. Whoever the writer, he or she always collaborated with Hitchco...

And by 'finished' I mean I took a break at 15%. Perhaps it was a fault of my kindle, but I felt that I had read 100 pages and it said I was still only at 15%, and I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. The biography itself was quite thorough. I gave up shortly after Alfred started making 'talkies', around the 1931 mark, and I had been 'watching along' with some mentioned in the book. I saw two of his silent films (The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger) and one talkie (Blackmail) and took them for what...

These nearly 800 pages (closer to 900 pages if you count the index and bibliography) is an impressive film by film history that incorporates numerous interviews by the author and references from books by everyone from Truffaut to Spoto. Whether Hitch was a monster or a troubled genius, or a kindly colleague, McGilligan shows a man whose life was consumed by film and a master filmmaker who created an unparalelled collection of films. This is a formidable book that came too early to consider Night...

I have to admit that my opinion on this extraordinary book is probably influenced by the fact that I once had lunch with the author, a genial, generous man full of anecdotes and humble brilliance. He told me a few things about his research on other filmmakers such as Clint Eastwood that were equally illuminating and have since made it into book form. His biography of Hitchcock surpasses the unsurpassable "Dark Side of Genius" by Donald Spoto, which says a lot. From time to time I still come acro...

I first read this in 2007 and have referred back to it, and re-read sections umpteen times since then. Not only does it cover Hitchcock's life and work in detail, it looks at all the films and how they came to be, how they were scripted (often by a succession of scriptwriters), how producers got in the way, how Hitchcock dealt with all the details and the casts and the producers in his inimitable way, and which actors he liked to work with, which ones he'd wished he hadn't had to work with and m...