I'm amazed that the Master isn't getting more respect at these forums. The guy made so many entertaining/ disturbing films with so many iconic performances. Anybody else even considered in this particular section of the forum just about owes most of their "brilliant" concepts to Hitch.

There are far too many essential films by this genius to list here. But I will mention some of his later films as textbook examples of storytelling and audience-manipulation, and I use the latter phrase in a very-positive way.

If you haven't seen "Rear Window", "The Trouble With Harry", "Vertigo", "North By Northwest", "Psycho", "The Birds", "Frenzy" or "Family Plot", check them all out. If you have seen them, watch them again. If you know someone who hasn't seen them, get them to watch "Rear Window", "Vertigo" or "Psycho" now.

Enough ranting. Any opinions? (I don't mean about my mental health... I already know I'm fu*ked up!)

I cant believe I had totally forgotten about Hitchcock. Thats shameful!

The great thing about Hitchcock for me is that I loved him as a child. I grew up with Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone as my two favorite shows. I remember going to Universal Studios and being stoked out of my mind that they had a Hitchcock exhibit.

Then I grew up and fell in love with all films and discovered that Hitchcock was not only someone I could be fascinated with from the perspective of childhood nostalgia, but there was a level of sophistication to his work that I could explore in my maturity as well.

That being said, Psycho is my favorite film of his in that it amazed me as a child and continues to today, Rebecca is my favorite in that it was my introduction to the other side of Hitchcock, and North by Northwest is my all-purpose favorite. And I simply can't not mention Vertigo.

Favorite Hitchcock Films:

1. Vertigo (by far my favorite)
2. Psycho
3. The Birds
4. Rope
5. North By Northwest

Favorite Hitchcock

1. Vertigo
2. Rear Window
3. Rope
4. North by NW
5. Psycho

My favorite hitchcock is psycho. I can see the way it was ingeniously done and even though it is in black and white it is still scary.

Here are my top 10 in order(!)

1. Notorious
2. 39 Steps
3. North By Northwest
4. Suspicion
5. To Catch A Thief
6. Rear Window
7. Strangers On A Train
8. Rebecca
9. Psycho
10. Lifeboat

I'm a big Cary Grant fan, which helps explain my top 5.

I haven't seen as many Hitchcock films as I'd like to and I have no excuse for it! But I would list North By Northwest, To Catch A Thief, The Birds and Shadow of A Doubt as my favorites. I suppose I need to check TCM more often and fire up the vcr when Hitch's films are on.

I'm sorry I didn't mention it. They showed 40 of Hitch's films last week on TCM!!!

No problem, mark, I'm seeing some good deals on Hitchcock dvds at ebay. Probably better quality than my old vcr would turn out.

I have virtually all of Hitchock's output and FRENZY was the first film of his that I caught on original release. It was Hitch's penultimate film and I liked it when I saw it as a kid and it is a film that holds up today.

The Film Forum in NYC is currently running a comprehensive, if not complete, Hitchcock retro and I caught up again with SABOTAGE, a film I'd seen years ago. This is the film used as an example of the difference between "suspense" and "surprise."

While this film was made in England before came over to Hollywood, I had forgotten that it starred a Hollywood starlet, Sylvia Sidney. It was witty and suspensful, but kind of went off track near the end once Oscar Homolka, good as the villain and Sidney's husband, was outed as a baddie. Interesting the difference between an English film, where they didn't have a production code, and Hollywood where they did. If it was a Hollywood film, Sidney would have had to pay for her crime, but in England she was allowed to be let off the hook.

I caught up with one Alfred Hitchcock's silent films last night called THE RING. It was from '27 and is essentially a love triangle set in the world of boxing. Hitch was still in the inchoate stage of his career here the film was interesting, but not all that essential. I now have seen all of Hitch's films except for the silent film THE LODGER and one of his early talkies, SKIN GAME.

Some readers may find my interpretation of Hitchcock a little over the top...perhaps it is...
________________________

SUSPENSE

Film director Alfred Hitchcock produced his film The Birds in 1963.(1) The essential element in Hitchcock's films is suspense and it operates on deeper psychological and moral levels than in simple 'who-dun-its.' This suspense was, it seems to me, an appropriate emotion for the year 1963. The hundred year period, 1913-2013, was and would be a traumatic one for humanity. 1963 was the mid-point of this period filled with convulsions precipitated in the world. So far some 1.5 billion have died from a list of problems as long as your arm...and the story looks like it will be around for some time to come.

One of Hitchcock's most important contributions to cinema was his recognition of the spectator's tendency to identify with the characters on the screen. When The Birds was first screened in 1963, I was just starting out in life. I was 19. No one asked me to "gird myself for heroism." But for the long haul, that was one quality I needed. -Ron Price with thanks to 1Tippy Hedren on "Arts Today," ABC Radio National, 10:05-11:00 am, 8 January 2002.

Little did I know, then,
and little did his audiences see
the metaphorical significance
of all those birds
attacking and screeching
just as I was about to enter maturity.
The global undertaking set in motion
a century before was well under way.

In the intimate and private parts
of our lives, on that long, stony,
tortuous road Hitchcock told us
about, that path of challenges that
my father and grandfather had lived
through was now about to be mine.

Another catastrophe was on the horison,
little did we know back in the fifties,
although the shadow of the bomb warmed
us up. The catastrophe I have lived
through these last 50 years is of undreamed
of dimensions, that fire, that consternation,
that terror which would come to exist
in the hearts of men had indeed come.
Hitchcock was more than prescient.

And still we wondered why
the darkness, the world confusion.
In our own lives the birds of our hearts
too often did not sing,caught-up in
the dust-heap of this mortal world:
many a talon claweth at this thrush
of the eternal garden. Pitiless ravens
do lie in wait for this bird of the heavens
...that bird, one of those birds Alfred,
was me!

Ron Price
December 25th 2005

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RonPrice,

One of the rep houses in New York City is running a series called "Essential Hitchcock" and yesterday I caught up again with THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH remake with Jimmy Stewart & Doris Day. It held up very well, though I thought some of it was implausible, maybe because I am looking at it with a 2005 sensibility as opposed to a 1955 sensibility. For example, today would Stewart/Day entrust their kid to someone they had met only a day before? That maybe would have been plausible back in the benign 1950s, but today you are horrified that someone would do that and child welfare should come in and take the kid away from their irresponsible parents. Serves them right that the kid was kidnapped. And would a *star* like Day's character give up her stage career to marry Stewart and move to Indianapolis to be a housewife after she had sung in London, Paris & New York. That is ridiculous.

Plausibility aside, the set piece set in Royal Albert Hall is brilliantly directed with Hitch cross-cutting between the minister who is about to be assassinated/shot, the assassin and Stewart/Day who are trying to stop him.

It was a beautiful print to boot.

I remember back in the 1980s five or six Hitchcock films that had been unseen for years popped up again and received releases in commercial houses. I can no longer remember what the films were and why the films were out of circulation. Anyone remember? I think THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH was one of the films in that group. REAR WINDOW too. I remember seeing all of those that were re-released.

The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Trouble With Harry and Rope were all released, one at a time, in the mid 1980s. They had been out of circulation because Hitch had bought back the rights to those five films, and when he died, he willed them to his daughter Pat (she was in Strangers on a Train, Psycho and Stage Fright.) Eventually she agreed to rerelease them to theatres and also to have them restored.

I took another look, via video, at REBECCA, the 1940 Best Picture winner. It holds up very well, though its 120+ minute running time is a tad long. Judith Anderson's performance remains legendary as the major domo at Manderlay. I thought the actress who played Mrs. Van Poppel was also outstanding. And George Sanders, in a small role, stole every scene he was in.

I caught a couple more of Hitch's films last night, including YOUNG AND INNOCENT, a terrific film from '37. It was one of a run of Hitch's films that he made in the mid-to-late 30's before Selznick lured him over to Hollywood to make REBECCA. Some feel Hitch's most fertile period was the period before he moved to the States.

I had seen this film before, but remembered nothing about it. It is actually very witty and is a gentle story of a man falsely accused of committing murder, hooking up with the top cop's daughter and then the two of them work to get him free. The daughter and the accused criminal fall in love. Done deftly.

I'm not a big silent film aficionado, but had a pretty good time with the film playing on the other half of the double-bill, an obscure early Hitchcock film from '27 called DOWNHILL. It was suprisingly watchable about a guy who gets in trouble in college, is disowned by his wealthy family and goes on a downward spiral. Pretty good, though the falsely upbeat ending kind of ruins the film.

I picked up a Hitchcock dvd box set through a online shop's super-sale and have been watching a film per summer weekend. So far I've seen Rope (loved Jimmy Stewart in this), Saboteur (reminded me somewhat of North By Northwest) and The Trouble with Harry (great rural setting). I'm still deciding between Topaz and Frenzy -neither of which I've seen- for this weekend. I'm very pleased with this set and hope to pick up another Hitchcock collection if they have another great sale (or individual dvds if they don't).

I think Frenzy is about ten times better than Topaz.

Frenzy was a great choice for a steamy July night. Loved the potato truck scene where the murderer tries to pry the clip away from the corpse. I wasn't sure how Jon Finch's friend (Porter?) noticed him in the park before hiding him away for most of the day. Still I did catch a glimpse of Hitchcock in the crowd scene near the Thames at the beginning.