Which films shall I watch?

There are so many places to start when deciding on which Hitchcock films to watch. His career began in the 1920s in England and his last film, Family Plot, was released in 1976. The Lodger may be Hitchcock's best-known silent film. Blackmail is a well-regarded early film and was Hitchcock's first to use sound. There were great Hitchcock British films in the 1930s including The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes.

Hitchcock's first American film, Rebecca, is tremendously entertaining but somewhat uncharacteristic of the director, as it's a big gothic romance. A lesser known but brilliant film from this era is Shadow of a Doubt, which features Joseph Cotten as a serial murderer (although the expression did not yet exist in the 1940s) who kills rich, elderly women for their money and who, on the run from the police, flees to the safety of his sister and her family in the small California town where they live. The film follows the killer as he insinuates himself into the life of the family but increasingly comes under scrutiny and suspicion by his teenaged niece. This may well be my favorite Hitchcock film, although I admit that is a difficult judgement to make with such a bounty from which to choose.

 

As a case in point, just a few years later comes another 1940s era Hitchcock classic, Notorious. It is essential viewing for anyone who loves Hollywood movies at their absolute pinnacle and another favorite of mine.  

In the early 1950s Hitchcock made Strangers on a Train, which, like Shadow of a Doubt, features a psychopath as a main character. This film is probably less well known than many of Hitchcock's films of the 1940s and 1950s, but it shouldn't be. 

"Criss-cross"

If you haven't seen this film, don't delay. It is one of the greatest of Hollywood thrillers, with an unforgettable performance by Robert Walker as Bruno, the psycho who decides that he and the man he meets on the train, Guy, should "swap" murders.