Hitchcock’s Cryptonomies is an intellectual event of the first order for film studies, critical theory, and philosophy. In the originality of its challenge to received critical approaches, it has no peer in film theory. Cohen forces the reader to reassess not simply the ostensible object of his study but the nature of reality, the history of the West, and all ways of knowing. Hitchcock’s Cryptonomies is a work that should be counted with the breakthrough books of the twentieth century; if enough readers take the time to let the book speak, it should remake film studies and philosophy, too.