The author asserts that the artistic forces and cultural currents of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-centuries must have influenced Hitchcock to seek or include classical materials in these films.
Padilla provides close readings of the four films and analyzes the mythological components in them. The book is divided into five chapters: “Introduction” “One: Hestia’s Hearths and the Judgment of Paris in The Farmer’s Wife ” “Two: Eleusinian Mysteries and Heroic Catabasis in the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much ” “Three: The Heroine Pattern of Cupid and Psyche in Rebecca ” “Four: Crisscrossing Strangers on a Train with the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.” The book includes a list of the feature films of Alfred Hitchcock, forty-seven photographs, and an appendix of story summaries. Padilla’s Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock is an interesting book that analyzes Hitchcock’s films to demonstrate “the capacity of ancient myth to organize thematic-rich narrative” (2).
