Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

Patrick Mcgilligan

HarperCollins, Sep 14, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 864 pages

In a career that spanned six decades and more than sixty films, Alfred Hitchcock became the most widely recognized director who ever lived. His films -- including The 39 Steps, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds -- set new standards for cinematic invention and storytelling Élan. Since his death, Hitchcock has become crystallized in the public imagination as the macabre Englishman, the sexual obsessive, the Master of Suspense. But this remarkable biography draws on prodigious new research to restore Hitchcock the man -- the ingenious craftsman, the avid collaborator, the constant trickster, provocateur, and romantic. Like Hitchcock's best films, Patrick McGilligan's life of Hitchcock is a drama full of revelation, graced by a central love story, dark humor, and cliff-hanging suspense: a definitive portrait of the most creative, and least understood, figure in film history.

What people are saying

Review: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

User Review  - Deb - Goodreads

I loved, loved, loved this exhaustively researched biography/filmography. It was so absorbing, I was compelled to stop frequently to re-view many of his classic films - thank you, Amazon Prime! If you love Hitchcock movies, you will enjoy this book.

Review: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

User Review  - Paul - Goodreads

Great bio on Hitch. I've read most of them but this one is the most in depth and complete review of his films, including his silent and British, I believe. Wonderful analyses of his films along the way and plenty of juicy gossip.

About the author

Patrick McGilligan’s biographies include the acclaimed Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only; the Edgar-nominated Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; and George Cukor: A Double Life. The author of several New York Times Notable Books, he has also penned biographies of Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Robert Altman, and James Cagney, along with the oral history Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (with Paul Buhle). McGilligan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
• Author: Patrick Mcgilligan
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004
• ISBN: 0060988274, 9780060988272
• Length: 864 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts