Chapters 8-11 Summary and Analysis

In 1944 Hitchcock returned to America to film "Spellbound." Hitchcock states that the original script wasn't tight enough and when he returned to Hollywood, it was rewritten with a tighter focus on psychoanalysis. The only downside to involving psychoanalysis is that there is less ability to fantasize and therefore a logical approach had to be used toward the main character's adventures.

Truffaut refers to "Notorious" as his favorite Hitchcock film and calls it the quintessence of Hitchcock. Ben Hecht also worked on the screenplay for "Notorious," and the writer and filmmaker spent a great deal of time on choosing a suitable MacGuffin for the story. Many different scenarios were tried and cast aside for being overly complex. The final decision for the MacGuffin was to use several samples of uranium stored in a wine bottle. When the producer questioned Hitchcock's...