Hidden Hitchcock

Book excerpt: Hidden Hitchcock is two things: a book about the hidden poetics of the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, and a confession by Miller as he finds himself lured into Hitchcock s ineffable web. Technology has helped Miller pinpoint a secretand bafflingfilm recessed alongside the easily identifiable habits of Hitchcock s trademark suspense. These are the Hidden Pictures that Miller has unearthed. In exploring Hitch s latent vision, Miller has many discoveries to sharenon-narrative microstructures that he points out for the first time: the second Hitchcock cameo (not the one we are trained to spot), the verbal-to-visual charade, the faux continuity error, to name a few. Their general purpose seems to insinuate a game of hide-and-seek that, until the viewer finds one of these Hidden Pictures, s/he may never know is in play. Through Hitchcock s hidden style, we confront a resistance to meaning so deep-seated that it seems less a project than a compulsion (a psychic drive); and so anti-social that to redeem it by assigning it a point risks missing the point."