1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
Summary
Cross-mapping Hitchcock and Nabokov
In late 1964, Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov cross paths for a short period of time. Hitchcock, the filmmaker, approaches Nabokov, the writer, for a joint project. After a telephone conversation, the two exchange several plot ideas revolving around spectacular scenarios of dislocation: the story of a homeless girl whose widowed father manages a large international hotel with the rest of the family members posing as concierge, cashier, chef, housekeeper as well as a bedridden matriarch, while, in fact, they form a shady ‘backstage’ gang of crooks; a starlet whose astronaut lover appears to be curiously changed after his return from outer space to earth; a senator's daughter engaged to an Americanised secret agent who may potentially defect during his visit to his Russian homeland; and, finally, a defector from behind the Iron Curtain who is betrayed by a seemingly benevolent American couple on their western ranch to Soviet agents intent on either his death or abduction. In their letters both the director and author express interest in some of the material. Hitchcock writes that ‘my needs are immediate and urgent’ and Nabokov suggests that they meet in Europe the following year.
What a film by Hitchcock and Nabokov might have looked like had they pursued their plans, we can only speculate. At the same time, the anecdote of their near-collaboration intrigues me because it evokes a host of correspondences between their oeuvres.
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- Figurations of Exile in Hitchcock and Nabokov , pp. 1 - 30Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008