Book Chapter

Hitchcock's Narrative Modernism: Ironies of Fictional Time

Hemmeter, Thomas

2011

Overview

This chapter contains sections titled: The MacGuffin Plot: A Modernist Search for Meaning Violent Disruption of Narrative Point of View: The Perspective from the Middle The Other Modernism: Does the Story of Death End Narrative or Begin Storytelling? Narrative Time as Passage: Liberating Ironies of Conflicting Desires Works Cited

• Publisher: Wiley‐Blackwell
• Subject: auteurist Donald Spoto, in 1976 ‐ critics, “by passing beyond story and plot to theme and structure” / Hitchcock's films, undercutting ‐ classical Hollywood narrative, in controlling narrative time / Hitchcock's narrative modernism ‐ ironies of fictional time / MacGuffin plot ‐ a modernist search for meaning / mediating power of fictional storytelling ‐ recognized in Hitchcock's ironic use of suspense / modernist temporal concerns, radical contingency of human time ‐ apocalyptic fear of imminent end of human time / North by Northwest, Thornhill in Kaplan's role ‐ the MacGuffin spy fiction / Psycho's rupture of classical point of view ‐ not unique in Hitchcock's films Sabotage / Psycho, reflecting a similar sense ‐ of temporal openness in its multiple endings / violent disruption, narrative view ‐ reordering, classical narrative time in Hitchcock's cinema
• ISBN: 1405185384, 9781405185387