| 
| 
| 
| 
This pre-Halloween program, illustrated with visuals from a wide range of Hitchcock’s fifty-three films, proposes why it’s fun to have Hitchcock scare us, even though it’s no fun to be scared.
* Use this link to join our virtual program: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88636638553
Asked once by an interviewer to explain the deepest logic of his films, Alfred Hitchcock replied: “To put the audience through it.” Generations of moviegoers can attest that watching Hitchcock’s thrillers can indeed make them feel as if they’ve gone through an emotional wringer that can extend to short breaths, clenched fists, screams of terror, and other physical indications that we feel as if we’re suffering the same excruciating ordeals as his heroes and (especially) his heroines. Why do Hitchcock’s films continue to be popular forty years after his death? Most people don’t enjoy feeling frightened in real life; why do we submit not only willingly, but eagerly to the expectation that we’re going to be scared, when the lights dim at the beginning of a Hitchcock film?
Presenter: Thomas Leitch, a Professor of English at the University of Delaware, has written two books on Alfred Hitchcock—"Find the Director," and "Other Hitchcock Games" and "The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock"—and, with Leland Poague, coedited a third, "A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock." Although he hates being scared in real life and makes a point of avoiding horror movies, he’s loved Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers ever since, as a child, he saw "Dial M for Murder". five times in a single week, an experience that left an indelible mark on him.
At the conclusion of the program please feel free to take a brief online survey here:
https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/55918
* Virtual programs work best with the current version of the browsers listed below:
