ssical Myth in Alfred Hitchcock's Wrong Man and Grace Kelly Films

Mark Padilla’s classical reception readings of Alfred Hitchcock features some of the director’s most loved and important films, and demonstrates how they are informed by the educational and cultural classicism of the director’s formative years.The six close readings begin with discussions of the production histories, so as to theorize and clarify how classicism could and did enter the projects.Exploration of the films through a classical lens creates the opportunity to explore new themes and ideological investments.The result is a further appreciation of both the engine of the director’s storytelling creativity and the expressionism of classicism, especially Greek myth and art, in British and American modernism.The analysis organizes the material into two triptychs, one focused on the three films sharing a wrong man pattern (wrongly accused man goes on the run to clear himself), the other treating the films starring the actress Grace Kelly.Chapter One, on The 39 Steps (1935), finds the