Popular Culture Review - Volume 26, Number 2 - Summer 2015
BOOK REVIEWS
Hitchcock à la Carte
By Jan Olsson, Duke University Press, 2015
Romana Guillotte, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Good evening.”
These words started the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents
(and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour) by the notorious director himself. In Jan
Olsson’s Hitchcock à la Carte, the length of the director’s works, stretching
consumption. Olsson’s study is about a trifecta of Hitchcockian themes: the
macabre, food and the director’s own corporeal image. The largest examples
of these are drawn from the long-running television show, an hour-long meal,
where hors d’oeuvres and murder are served to you by the director.
The study starts chronologically from Hitchcock’s arrival in the U.S. in 1937
and, as with his famous silhouette from his television show, Olsson starts
works are discussed at a decent length, the real meat of the book comes
revolves around an inspector trying to get a confession out of a murderer at
a meal the inspector hosts, while “Lamb to the Slaughter” revolves around a
pregnant housewife who uses the leg of lamb to kill her cheating husband.
While this is a small portion, the other examples he cites are a veritable buffet
of macabre delights.
While discussing the director’s corporeal image, Olsson pulls from print
ads and uses the ‘bumpers’ - the bits before the episode airs and between
Hitchcock introduces the episode and usually spoofs his image, often with
comments on his weight, eating habits, the macabre, and how they all tie into
the story of the episode he is presenting. Olsson interviews one of the more
brain on the further exploitation of Hitchcock. The use of doubles or a madeup ‘brother’ appear in several of these bumpers, to which the director’s image
is then exploded, used as a marionette, tied to railroad tracks, and so much
more.
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