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Introducing the Hitchcock Touch

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Reassessing the Hitchcock Touch
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Abstract

This chapter introduces the all-too-elusive category of the Hitchcock Touch, assessing its role in Hitchcock scholarship and the quite diverse definitions which Hitchcock scholars have offered over the years. Following a brief intertextual comparison between the ‘Hitchcock Touch’ and the ‘Midas’ touch associated with larger-than-life villains like Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond films (a franchise that owes quite a significant debt to Hitchcockian cinema), Schwanebeck’s introduction emphasizes the industrial and collaborative aspects of Hitchcock’s filmmaking which have often been sidelined in celebration of Hitchcock’s authorship. From this follows the book’s subsequent structure, which puts equal focus on the films themselves, the paratextual apparatus surrounding Hitchcockian cinema, and the historical and intertextual dimension.

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Schwanebeck, W. (2017). Introducing the Hitchcock Touch. In: Schwanebeck, W. (eds) Reassessing the Hitchcock Touch. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60008-6_1

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