Review of The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock

By Celia Mattison | October 20, 2022

University of Virginia Press

BOOK VALUE

In The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Christine Madrid French investigates the surprisingly understudied development and legacy of the architecture in Hitchcock films. French argues that because Hitchcock is one of the most ubiquitous filmmakers of the 20th century, the buildings in his films are some of the most widely seen, and therefore influential, pieces of architecture in modern history. In six chapters, she explores the major thematic buildings of Hitchcock’s work: the lair, the skyscraper, the apartment, the mansion, and the motel. 

Throughout, French examines Hitchcock as pioneer and provocateur, an artist with a unique sense of film as an artform who used his medium to explore modern ideas of conflict, autonomy, and voyeurism. Hitchcock, French writes, “wielded the camera itself as the source of the point of view,” reframing the audience member as a participant in the film and in its horrors. The camera provides the viewer with a deep understanding of the films’ locations—even when they were artificial soundstages.

As an architectural historian and longtime Hitchcock fan, French is uniquely poised to study Hitchcock and his collaborators. By positioning each film and its respective buildings into a rich cinematic and cultural context, she grants the reader not just access to Hitchcock’s sensibilities but the mindset of the contemporary moviegoer. This becomes essential in the book’s longest chapter, which contains an illuminating analysis of Psycho and the now-iconic coupling of the Bates motel and mansion. French shows that, while the pairing is seemingly strange to many modern viewers, it was quite commonplace at the time and signified a type of abandoned midcentury Americana.

This fascinating cultural analysis will appeal to even the most casual cinephile, as what French writes of Hitchcock’s haunted houses equally applies to the cinema: “Entering dark places can change your life.”

Purchase The Architecture of Suspense from an independent bookstore near you.