Augustine Sedgewick: Fatherhood - A History of Love and Power

Edinburgh University Press, 2026, Paperback, 344 pages, 15.6 x 23.39 cm

A thorough analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's career-long engagement with, and influence on, film noir

• Provides case studies of Alfred Hitchcock's films and film noir, including Vertigo, Marnie, Strangers on a Train, Rebecca and The Birds
• Situates Hitchcock as influencing and influenced by film noir throughout his lengthy career
• Expands upon critical concepts of film noir as a fundamental cinematic type for the iconic works of Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was a major figure in the development and flourishing of film noir. His noir films became an inspirational foundation of the neo-noir movement beginning in the 1970s, from Brian de Palma’s mash-up homages to Hitchcock originals such as Obsession (1976) and Body Double (1984) to the dark political thrillers of the era that explore the underside of American life, all of which owe a substantial debt to Hitchcock.

However, the central role of Hitchcock in the long history of film noir has seldom been acknowledged in work devoted to his career and noir criticism more generally. Instead, there has been a tendency to consider Hitchcock’s many dark thrillers and crime melodramas as sui generis, that is, as "Hitchcock films" that are somehow separate and distinct from industry trends. But this is to take a narrow view of the director's accomplishments that underestimates his substantial contributions to film history.

Alfred Hitchcock and Film Noir will be the first book-length treatment of the impressive corpus of Hitchcock noir films considered as such, as well as of his connection more generally to the emergence and flourishing of this important cinematic trend.