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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. 

Reading about Hitchcock and Vertigo

In my college years and beyond I was in full-blown Hitchcock obsession mode, particularly after reading Donald Spoto's The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures, which examined each film in detail. The version I read is pictured below. Spoto's book is not as highly thought of as it once was, perhaps, but it is still, in my opinion, one of the essential books that any Hitchcock aficionado must read. You have to check out Spoto's 50+ page treatment of Vertigo. Spoto also wrote a Hitchcock biography called The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, that is quite good (though I read it about 20 years ago, I think), but even better is Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan. Spoto's book is hurt somewhat, I think, by his desire to show how all Hitchcock's darkest impulses played out in his films. McGilligan's book seems more balanced to me, and more believable as the story of a complex, often strange, man.  

As good as these books are, of course, you should start with the films themselves. Most people who care about movies have already seen some of Hitchcock's movies, particularly the better-known ones like the aforementioned Psycho and The Birds. There are many "essential" Hitchcock pictures, perhaps none more so than Vertigo, the movie poster of which is seen above. Vertigo overtook Citizen Kane as the highest-ranked film ever made in the last poll taken by Sight and Sound magazine, a British film journal that conducts the poll every ten years. The ascendancy of Vertigo in the eyes of critics over the decades is quite remarkable considering that it didn't show up in the poll at all until 1982, well over 20 years after its release. Much of this was due to the film not being available for viewing by most people, but it was a also a box office flop on its release and even Hitchcock downplayed its importance somewhat because of that. But in Vertigo Hitchcock's obsessions and his complete command of the art and craft of filmmaking come together to create a unique masterpiece and perhaps his greatest achievement.

Welcome to my Alfred Hitchcock Blog!

I have been interested in/fascinated by/obsessed with (?) Alfred Hitchcock since before I ever saw a Hitchcock film. Growing up as I did in the 1960s and 70s, Psycho was the stuff of legend for kids like me who had heard stories of how people (adult people) were afraid to take showers after seeing it. Like most kids, I liked to be scared, and Psycho seemed to be the ultimate scare available in the movies, but it was the age of three television networks, no VCRs (not even Beta), and movies like Psycho didn't play on TV all the time. We probably wouldn't have been allowed to see it if it had been. I don't know if people were really afraid to take showers after seeing the movie, although I have read that Janet Leigh, who plays Marion Crane, the woman (spoilers!) famously butchered in the shower, didn't take showers for a long time after making and seeing the movie. Whether members of the general public had a similar reaction it's hard to say, but there is no doubt the movie had quite an impact. I can't think of a contemporary movie that has or could have such an impact.