The Filmography of Alfred Hitchcock

[Swift]

I'd been thinking of starting a series of threads discussing the filmographies of various directors/actors with Hitchcock being the first. Seeing as The Birds has just been brought up in the other thread, now is as good a time as any.

 

I think along with Kubrick, Hitchcock is usually a cinephile's first port of call when branching out into the world of film. Certainly, that's true for me, and for that reason I think Hitchcock holds a dear place in most of our hearts. That being said, some of his films that are considered classics don't really work for me.

 

The Birds is well made, but it feels like one of his flimsiest works. Vertigo ends up topping a lot of best film lists, though I've never understood why. North By Northwest has never done anything for me.

 

In no particular order, the Hitchcock films that are top of my list are Psycho (amazing how well it holds up, apart from that one scene at the end, obviously), Dial M For Murder (probably my favourite, if a little flawed), Strangers On A Train (almost flawless - why didn't he just throw the tennis match, instead of trying to win it?) and Rope. I remember loving Rear Window, but haven't seen it in 15+ years, so can't comment on it, though I suspect I'll still love it when I get around to it.

[Reed]

Vertigo has always been rather absurd to me. The ending is so abrupt and almost unintentionally funny. Marnie felt like a big anti-climax too.

 

I do adore The Birds and Psycho though. Even after 50 years, Psycho still feels genuinely unsettling, even though it really is quite mild by modern horror standards.

[Antacular]

I only saw The Birds once, as a kid, but I thought it was laughably bad. I mean, birds? Come on.

[caley]

I have seen more Alfred Hitchcock movies than any other director, by a considerable amount (27 films of his, with Woody Allen (which is interesting as I grew disinterested in basically everything he's done since 'Match Point'), Werner Herzog, Akira Kurosawa, and Steven Spielberg all tied with 16).

 

So, I'll give you my Top 7...and then my Bottom 3.

 

01. Psycho: I know people think 'Vertigo' is the masterpiece (I saw it once and wasn't floored, but would like to go back to it) and others go to bat for 'Notorious' (which I find to be kind of a bore), but to me this is the basic distillation of everything Hitchcock ever wanted to down to its purest form, that is, pure terror.  I waver sometimes with this as my #1 (or whether it's #2 or #3) because I'm not sure it's as endlessly watchable as the films that will follow it on the list.  But, then I remember the shock of the murder scene, but what is infinitely scarier in its cold-blooded ruthlessness is the aftermath: the slow pan out from the eyes staring endlessly in terror, as Norman meticulously washes and cleans everything with the unending care of someone who has done this thing many, many times before.  Or the awesome murder of the detective as he falls backwards down the stairs!  Or the reveal of Norman in his mother's clothes which no matter how many times you've seen, still makes you jump out of your chair (admit it!)! And then I go, "Nope, 'Psycho's the best."

 

02. Read Window: This is one of those films you just won't ever see again.  I mean, it's ridiculously silly and artificial: the city block the laid-up Jeff looks over doesn't even look real, and everything is really well lit with neighbours who don't much care for curtains.  But, as an exercise in pure terror, it almooooooost hits the highs of 'Psycho' with a more everyday evil, the idea that your neighbour has done something awful, only you witnessed it, no one will believe you, and he's coming for you, and you can't move.  There might not be a more evil scene in any Hitchcock ever, than Raymond Burr sitting in the dark smoking a cigarette, staring directly at Jeff with bad intentions on his mind.

 

03. North By Northwest: Hitchcock's most fun movie.  An action-packed romp, full of twists and turns with the incomparably charismatic Carey Grant as an everyman who gets pulled into a major spy caper.  It's smart, it's exciting, you're never entirely sure what side you're on, and it has some of the best action sequences ever: especially the oft-lampooned and imitated airplane attack.

 

04. The Birds: Y'all are crazy, 'The Birds' is amazing.  It's scary and eerie (I mean, c'mon, the scene at the school with thousands of birds sitting peacefully on the playground but you know they're about to go berserk) but it's also really funny.  The scene in the diner with all the people muttering and complaining and gossiping is as good of a send-up of small-town life as has ever been put on film.  Plus, you've got to respect a director who would drive his star to basically a nervous breakdown in order to get his shots, don't you?!

 

05. Rebecca: It's really old-fashioned, but really neat and creepy in an old-style gothic way.

 

06. Rope: This is Hitchcock as a show-off with a fairly simplistic story in the foreground while he shoots the entire film in lengthy, showy takes with hidden cuts, so that it's almost like you're placed right in the shoes of the two murderers and feel the panic overtake them.

 

07. Young and Innocent: My favourite unknown Hitchcock film is largely forgotten because of a rather unfortunate and tasteless appearance of a character in blackface in the final stretch.  But, as far as Hitchcock goes, even though it deals in all his usual tropes - wrongfully accused man, murder, innocent girl who loves a man so he CAN'T be guilty - it's the most fun and carefree and breezy Hitchcock film you can get!

 

 

BOTTOM 3

03. The Man Who Knew Too Much: Either of them, honestly.  The later one is basically a vehicle for Doris Day to sing, so if that's your bag, you'll probably dig it.  The ending scene at the orchestra is pretty nifty/the scene where Day has to sing her song  to find her daughter is not so much.  The earlier one isn't as polished and doesn't have the awesome orchestra scene, but it does have an incredibly bizarre chair fight where guys repeatedly whip exploding chairs at each other.  Truthfully, this spot could've gone to 'Sabotage' or 'Suspicion' but I don't remember either well enough to make that determination.

 

02. Jamaica Inn: This was about pirates or something.  It was off one of those awful cheap early Hitchcock collections and the version I had features an irritating high-pitched squeal that played constantly in the background of the film.  I shouldn't hold a poor transfer against a movie, but I'm going to.  I also really didn't enjoy it.

 

01. Marnie: There's just something wrong here.  Marnie's condition (Blacking out when she sees red or a lightning storm) is such a poorly-contrived plot point that it's impossible to suspend disbelief that she would be able to function in day-to-day life with it.  Sean Connery also seemed like he was baffled by the film, while he was in it!  I had high hopes for this one.  You could also put 'Torn Curtain' here as I've tried to watch 3-4 separate times and get completely bored about anywhere from 5-25 minutes into it and have never gotten any further.

[Reed]

 

Plus, you've got to respect a director who would drive his star to basically a nervous breakdown in order to get his shots, don't you?!

 

Regardless of how he allegedly acted towards her off-screen (which was deplorable), I have to give Hitchcock credit: If you've seen her in anything besides Marnie or The Birds, Tippi Hedren is just not that good an actress. But in his movies she comes off as genuine star. He could get amazing performances out of pretty average actors.

[Brian Fowler]

This hating on Vertigo is making me very sad.

 

To be fair, I haven't seen it since college (indeed, I really haven't watched much Hitchcock since college, after gorging on every film of his my school library had) but it was definitely 20 year old me's favorite film of his.

[J.T.]

Vertigo is awesome,  Y'all are fucking high.  Kim Novak being absolutely stunning helped a lot.  Hitchcock had an eye for leading ladies, I'll tell ya.

 

Psycho and The Birds arguably hold co-spots as Magnum Opus.  The set-ups and the payoffs are fucking hardcore.  I am not sure what freaked me out more:  OH SHIT, THE BATHROOM DOOR JUST OPENED~! or LOOK BEHIND YOU ON THE GODDAMNED JUNGLE GYM, LADY~!  THE FUCKING BIRDS ARE EVERYWHERE~!

 

My gulty favorite Hitchcock film is To Catch A Thief. Yeah, I know it is light and formulaic but it is so much fun to watch.

[odessasteps]

Mr and Mrs Smith is prob his most underrated picture.

[jaedmc]

Jamaica Inn has Charles Laughton being Charles mother fuckin' Laughton, that should be enough.

 

I've seen 22 of his movies according to icheckmovies and I love something about every one of them. There's always a shot or a performance that punches me in the nose.

[The Z]

Interesting how Birds manages to divide people.

I had the exact same reaction as Antacular, when I watched the movie, even though I was an adult when I saw it. Definitely my least favorite Hitchcock movie.

My favorite has to be North by Northwest, followed by Psycho, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and Vertigo.

I think I've pretty much liked every Hitchcock movie I've seen, except The Birds.

[Swift]

While I mentioned that there are some of his films I dislike, there is nothing that I hate or consider outright bad either. Like Jae said, they all have at least something going for them. I remember one of his very early movies, Number Seventeen, being ridiculously plotted (at one point the good guy in handcuffs says to the bad guy "I say old chap. These cuffs are chafing me. You wouldn't mind taking them off, would you?", or something along those lines, followed by the bad guy happily obliging) but on the other hand it has Hitchcock experimenting in German expressionism and a fun, well done but somewhat hokey bus/train chase at the end using miniatures.

 

And while I don't care for The Birds, the scene previously mentioned where all the birds gather in the playground is genuinely unsettling (even if you can tell that most of them are fake)

[caley]

 

My gulty favorite Hitchcock film is To Catch A Thief. Yeah, I know it is light and formulaic but it is so much fun to watch.

It was my #8 favourite.  Cary Grant's bizarre Triple H-level suntan was so distracting that it bumped it down a notch for me.

[Swift]

Speaking of actors' bizarre physical appearances in Hitchcock movies, Sean Connery's eyebrows were laughable in Marnie.

 

[odessasteps]

One of my favorite undergraduate classes was a film class on Hitchcock.

For you film school nerds, the highlight was a lecture to my class by Laura Mulvey, who was at IU to give a lecture on Her new BFI biok about Citizen Kane.

Naturally, it was about Hitch and the female gaze and you can imagine the lecture probably.

(My paper for that class was about the importance of Bernard Herrmann to Hitch's films.)

[Pete]

Rear Window is one of my all time favorite movies. The self-contained nature of the staging really contributes to the drama: you're locked in with Jeffries, seeing what he sees and never leaving his POV except for 1-2 shots from wire to wire.

 

Back when I was 10 or so, it enjoyed a brief re-release after the settling of Hitch's estate and my mom took us all the way up to the one theater in town where it was playing. I loved it even then and still find it funny that we would ever have to be dragged kicking and screaming (literally in my sister's case!) to one of his films.

[odessasteps]

Rear Window is one of my all time favorite movies. The self-contained nature of the staging really contributes to the drama: you're locked in with Jeffries, seeing what he sees and never leaving his POV except for 1-2 shots from wire to wire.

 

Back when I was 10 or so, it enjoyed a brief re-release after the settling of Hitch's estate and my mom took us all the way up to the one theater in town where it was playing. I loved it even then and still find it funny that we would ever have to be dragged kicking and screaming (literally in my sister's case!) to one of his films.

The thing that blew my mind about Rear Window is that all the windows in the building across the street were all various movie screen ratios.

That and the piano player would later be David Seville of Chipmunks / Witch Doctor fame.

[caley]

 

Rear Window is one of my all time favorite movies. The self-contained nature of the staging really contributes to the drama: you're locked in with Jeffries, seeing what he sees and never leaving his POV except for 1-2 shots from wire to wire.

 

Back when I was 10 or so, it enjoyed a brief re-release after the settling of Hitch's estate and my mom took us all the way up to the one theater in town where it was playing. I loved it even then and still find it funny that we would ever have to be dragged kicking and screaming (literally in my sister's case!) to one of his films.

The thing that blew my mind about Rear Window is that all the windows in the building across the street were all various movie screen ratios.

That and the piano player would later be David Seville of Chipmunks / Witch Doctor fame.

 

I like to randomly yell "Allllllllvin!" while he's onscreen...when I'm alone of course.

[Reed]

One of my favorite undergraduate classes was a film class on Hitchcock.

For you film school nerds, the highlight was a lecture to my class by Laura Mulvey, who was at IU to give a lecture on Her new BFI biok about Citizen Kane.

Naturally, it was about Hitch and the female gaze and you can imagine the lecture probably.

(My paper for that class was about the importance of Bernard Herrmann to Hitch's films.)

 

I can't dismiss the claims the Hitchcock was a sexist (of course he was), but I think he also had that Lynch thing where he put women on pedestals. He also wrote some great women's characters. Heck, Norman's mother isn't even in Psycho and she's still a hugely memorable character.

[odessasteps]

Hard to ignore the icy blonde motif:

Grace Kelly

Eva Marie Saint

kim Novak

Janet Leigh

Tippi Hedren

That said, the greatest Hitchcock actress is arguably Ingrid Bergman, especially in Notorious.

[Reed]

Don't forget Vera Miles, the original 'Final Girl.'

 

I think she's shockingly under-rated in Psycho.

[nate]

Hitch loved blondes like Tarantino loves feet.

I love "To Catch A Thief." Of the man's entire oeuvre, I irrationally love this one the most. Maybe it's the little French chick, I dunno ...

And as for early Hitchcock, it's all about the London Fog, yo.

[Reed]

RE: The icy blonde. At least the women in Hitch's movie were usually smart and/or resourceful. They were a pretty big departure from the ditzy Marilyn Monroe-type female characters prevalent in the '50s and '60s. In that respect, he was quite progressive.

[nate]

I remember taking a Film Appreciation class back in the day, and the instructor saying that Vertigo and Birds etc. were Hitch's treatise on necrophilia, adding that necrophilia had never been looked at as a plot device before. I piped up that the Corman Poe films ushered in some of that as well. Man, never call down a lit prof. Ever.

[jaedmc]

My homie Slavoj Zizek has the best thoughts on The Birds

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X7oSNhjCqw

[Lacelle]

Rear Window is his best & my favorite Hitch film but I really enjoy The Trouble With Harry & find it really overlooked.