Phoenix Tapes (1999) dir. Matthias Muller, Christoph Girardet

The Phoenix Tapes show reedited excerpts from 40 films by Alfred Hitchcock. The six chapters focus on a personal selection of various leitmotifx in Hitchcocks work. Like the sound samplings of electronic musicians, the montages of Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller plunder the archive with a selective editing of specific themes and motifs within Hitchcock s narratives. They also enjoy the same ambivalent relationship with their sources, combining an affectionate sense of the film as a kind of heritage, with a critical distance from values they may seem to represent, particulary in their depictions of Rob Flint