Hitchcock and the Anxiety of Authorship examines issues of cinema authorship engaged by and dynamized within the director's films. A unique study of self-reflexivity in Hitchcock's work from his earliest English silents to his final Hollywood features, this book considers how the director's releases constitute ever-shifting meditations on issues and conditions of creative agency in cinema. Abramson explores how, located in literal and emblematic sites of dramatic production, exhibition, and reception, and populated by figures of directors, actors, and audiences, Hitchcock's films exhibit a complicated, often disturbing vision of authorship - one that consistently problematizes rather than exemplifies the director's longstanding auteurist image. Viewing Hitchcock in a striking new light, Abramson analyzes these allegories of vexed agency in the context of his concepts of and commentary on the troubled association between cinema artistry and authorship, as well as the changing cultural, industrial, theoretical, and historical milieus in which his features were produced. Accordingly, the book illuminates how Hitchcock and his cinema register the constant dynamics that constitute film authorship.

Leslie H. Abramson is an adjunct professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, USA where she teaches courses on law and film.

Introduction: Self-Reflexivity in Hitchcock's Cinema & Struggles of Authorship
PART I: IMPERILING VISIONS: THE DIRECTOR
1. Introduction
2. Murder!
3. Sabotage
4. Notorious
5. Vertigo
6. Psycho
PART II: DRAMATIC ARTFULNESS: THE PERFORMER
7. Introduction
8. The Lodger
9. The 39 Steps
10. Spellbound
11. Marnie
PART III: DISTRIBUTING SITES: THE BEHOLDER
12. Introduction
13. The Ring
14. The Man Who Knew Too Much
15. Strangers on a Train
16. Rear Window
17. The Birds