Hitchcock's California: Vista Visions From the Camera Eye

5/5 ( ratings)

Part tribute, part pictorial essay, and part travelogue, Hitchcock's California: Vista Visions From the Camera Eye is a handsome hardbound book that is truly the first art book that does justice to the art of legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock. Featuring more than 100 original photographs, and a 21-page conversation between noted Hitchcock scholar Dan Auiler and photojournalist Robert Jones, Hitchcock's California's dimensions live up to the promise of the book's title: 15 inches wide by 8.5 inched tall, it is a true "widescreen" presentation.

The heart of this book is photographer Robert Jones's eighty superb photographs of California locations for Alfred Hitchcock's films. The Birds, Family Plot, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, and Vertigo were set primarily in California, while twelve other movies featured here also included California locations: Dial "M" for Murder, Foreign Correspondent, Marnie, North by Northwest, Notorious, Rebecca, Saboteur, Spellbound, Suspicion, Topaz, Torn Curtain, and Under Capricorn.

A highlight of this volume is the absorbing conversation between Jones and bestselling Hitchcock expert Dan Auiler. Auiler remarks, "Hitchcock was not really known as a location director. Here was a director who was really selective about going outside the studio, and it never occurred to me his outside locations had such iconic status.

"They do, they really do. I look at your photographs they're instantly recognizable and timeless. Even if they were supposed to be in England or someplace else, they are remarkably 'Hitchcock.'"

Another substantial part of the book is "Souvenirs of a Killing," photographer Aimee Sinclair's fascinating series of seventeen images recreating key scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's movies. Many are "MacGuffins"--plot devices Hitchcock used in his films to move the plot forward--and likewise evoke a sense of déjà vu in readers familiar with Hitchcock's pictures.

Readers of this book will experience long-past memories anew--from James Stewart rescuing Kim Novak from San Francisco Bay in Vertigo, to Cary Grant being attacked by a crop duster on a lonely country highway in North by Northwest--as we celebrate the unparalleled artistic gifts of Alfred Hitchcock.

"Robert Jones's wonderfully surreal photograph of 'Madeleine Elster' holding an enormous bouquet of pink roses against the background of the Golden Gate Bridge reminded me of my father's [composer Bernard Herrmann] hauntingly beautiful score for Vertigo, dramatically conveying the main character's obsessive adoration for the woman he attempts to shape into a dead, past love."
—Dorothy Herrmann, from her Afterword