Rating: 
Summary: The Man Who Knew Too Little
Review: Spoto has done an admirable job at putting together 500 compelling pages of reading. Unfortunately, he mentions the fundamental problem with this book in the very preface...that Hitchcock left few records and let his guard down for few individuals. The Hitchcock most knew was no more personal than what we know from his television persona. So right away, we have a biography that doesn't have much basis. So Spoto tries to compensate by drawing conclusions about Hitchcock based on his films. Kind of silly, really. Spotos analysis of the films could be interesting, but it's very uneven...he'll spend 10 pages on one film, and barely mention the existence of another. And the only revealing passage on anything regarding Hitchcock's life itself is on his Tippi Hedren years. However, my chief problem with The Dark Side of Genius is Spoto's tendency to excuse Hitchcock when convenient. It's ridiculously facile. EVERY time Spoto reached an unsuccessful Hitchcock film, he explains how Hitchcock was preoccupied, depressed, or altogether uninterested in the that film. Can't we allow that a genius is fallible? His classics were the product of passion; his failures were due do lack of interest. That's way too black and white a stance for any serious biographer or film scholar to promote. He never allows that Hitchcock tried and failed at times. To Spoto, when he failed, it's because he didn't care.
Rating: 
Summary: Portrait of the Artist as a Dog
Review: Spoto's life of Hitchcock, originally published in 1983, is one of the best biographies of a film director we have in English. It's a warts and all portrait, but instead of pitying or disliking Hitchcock for his idiosyncrasies and meannesses, we come to admire him even more for his singular dedication to the art of movies (and he was an artist, not merely "the master of suspense", to use an essentially narrow and insulting characterization). And as far as sheer technique goes, sheer mastery of the medium, Hitchcock probably was/is unsurpassed among modern day filmmakers. Spoto gives us detailed accounts of the making of each of Hitchcock's major films. He really did dislike actors, calling them cattle, but he of course had a fascination with blonde actresses. The book's most poignant segment is the episode invovling Hitchcock's infatuation with Tippi Hedren (a mediocre performer at best who should have been grateful for a great man's attention and adoration), which ultimately ended in humiliation and unhappiness for both of them. Spoto is wrong, however, about MARNIE. It is one of the director's greatest movies, as moving and sad a depiction of desperation as has been committed to celluoid. It fully deserves its late revival in critical favor. This is a clearly written, highly entertaining biography, and one of the closest glimpses we are liking to get straight from the director's chair.
Rating:
Summary: Spoto's solid but flawed biography
Review: This is a far better book than Spoto's Art of Alfred Hitchcock, where he makes terrible mistakes. Spoto is an ambitious writer who obviously enjoys his subject's films. His vision of Alfred Hitchcock as a tormented and sexually frustrated artist is not entirely convincing. Spoto piles on the anecdotes but cannot create a staisfactory synthesis of tormented genius. Hitchcock eludes him as he has eluded most biographers. The central problem of Hitchcock was that he was an entertainer and no amount of intellectual analysis can deny this fact. His films were to be commercial successes and he aimed steadily at his market. Spoto focuses far too much on the sexual underpinnings of Hitchock's work and ignores the enormous fun of the films. This book is a fair introduction to Hitchcock. Writers like Robin Wood,have gone further and better. Yet in the end, the sheer volume of his research will make this obligatory reading on Hitchcock. It will never be defintive.
Rating: 
Summary: By far the most useless book on Hitchcock
Review: This is one of the most influential and most useless books on Hitchcock. The book is very telling, not of its subject matter, but of the author. Sadly, the book received a lot of undue attention and its misconceptions have still not sufficiently diappeared. Absolutely horrendous.
Rating:
Summary: A book for the history! An amazing analysis about Hitchcock.
Review: This time "Spoto" bring to us one of the most dramatic analysis about Alfred Hitchcock ever. After an excelent research including interviews and most of all own Hitchcock movies, Donald Spoto uncover one of the most sucessful careers in the history of Cinema
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting tedium
Review: Took a little time to get going but once it did I read the book in two days. Extremely well researched and insightful. Have always been a Hitch fan, but was never aware of what a disturbed and internalized individual he was. The depth of this portrayal of the subject is surprising. Typically, a story like this will delve into relationships in the subject's life but Hitchcock really didn't have any. The author does a nice job of explaining the probable reasons for this. I recommend this book to fans of Hitchcock the man because it goes a long way in explaining why he made the films he did. Not to be confused with a technical "anthology", it's more like a psychological analysis into the twists and turns of the inside of Hitchcock's head. He was a strange dude!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting tedium
Review: Took a little time to get going but once it did I read the book in two days. Extremely well researched and insightful. Have always been a Hitch fan, but was never aware of what a disturbed and internalized individual he was. The depth of this portrayal of the subject is surprising. Typically, a story like this will delve into relationships in the subject's life but Hitchcock really didn't have any. The author does a nice job of explaining the probable reasons for this. I recommend this book to fans of Hitchcock the man because it goes a long way in explaining why he made the films he did. Not to be confused with a technical "anthology", it's more like a psychological analysis into the twists and turns of the inside of Hitchcock's head. He was a strange dude!
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