I’ve been on a quest to see all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. Almost all of them are good and many are some of my favorites.
Best:
Rope
Rear Window
The 39 Steps
Strangers on a Train
Worst:
Marnie. This is the only Hitchcock film that I actually disliked strongly
Lifeboat. I know Hitch considered Rope a gimmick, but I found Lifeboat to be slow paced and more gimmicky
Juno and the Paycock. Slow paced
In the past I might have listed Vertigo as a favorite, I love the San Francisco scenery but the storyline is too hard to like. Psycho is average . It may have influenced the slasher genre, but I don’t really think the film is one of his best.
I also really liked The Lodger, but the film copy on the public domain DVD was horrible.
As a thriller, Torn Curtain is a good comedy. The East Germans are as stupid as the Nazis on Hogan’s Heroes, and the part where Julie Andrews gushes “Oh, Michael!” to Paul Newman never fails to crack audiences up.
Speaking of dumb Nazis, I’ve always thought Saboteur was another abomination. It never fails to amaze me how guys like Bob Cummings can evade a nationwide manhunt and travel from California to New York with absolutely no money and not even a change of clothes.
Don’t get me started on North by Northwest. Cary Grant wouldn’t have been allowed to check into that hotel in Chicago covered in dirt and stinking to high heaven with no luggage. Nor would Commie agents have a luxury ranch within a stone’s throw of a national monument, or have been able to fly from South Dakota to Russia in anything less than a B-36.
Best would be: Rear Window
Psycho
The 39 Steps
North by Northwest
Worst: Juno and the Paycock
Jamaica Inn (Though that’s Charles Laughton’s fault)
Overrated; Vertigo. Not terrible, but far from his best and not worthy of the praise it gets. Topaz. The first Hitchcock I ever saw. I probably should watch again, but it was extremely dull.
Underrated Young and Innocent
Saboteur (both films were trial runs for North by Northwest) To Catch a Thief
Family Plot
Best: The Birds and Psycho
Overrated: Vertigo
Enjoyed it at the theater but it doesn’t hold up: Family Plot
Underrated: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Doris Day/Jimmy Stewart version
My favorite is Notorious. Claude Rains is deliciously evil, Ingrid Bergman is gorgeous and Cary Grant is Cary Grant.
For the record, I also like Marnie just fine. Rope is probably my third favorite. I wouldn’t go so far to judge whether a Hitchcock movie is good or not but I never liked Vertigo very much. I edited to add… I think The Birds is his best and worst (when you think about what he put Tippi Hedren through, it’s pretty insane.)
Surely, we must include a shout-out to the best Hitchcock movie not made by Hitchcock, namely, Stanley Donen’s Charade. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, and James Coburn. Classic Hitchcock McGuffin, innocent caught up in search for same, crosses and double-crosses. Brilliant.
My Favs:
Rear Window
Notorious
Strangers on a Train
Lifeboat (but admittedly more for Tallullah Bankhead’s performance than the movie itself)
I may be instigating some nerd-hate, but I think “The Birds” is vastly over-rated. There is about half an hour of interesting material, but surrounded by about an hour of turgid soap opera melodrama. And Tippi Hedren is so stiff and wooden as the lead in this, that I have never even bothered to watch “Marnie.” (If she couldn’t carry a film that is considered one of Hitch’s best, to my mind, I certainly wouldn’t bother watching her try to carry what is supposedly one of his worst.)
Apart from Salvador Dali’s art-directed dream sequence, “Spellbound” is unwatchably boring.
I love Charade, and a big part of the credit goes to screenwriter Peter Stone. But Charade resembles North by Northwest, and not many other Hitchcock flicks. It hasn’t got the mood, the darkness. It’s too light-hearted (even though MAD magazine’s parody of it has Stanley donen pulling off a mask at the end to reveal he’s really “Alfred Hatchplot”).
A much more Hitchcock-like flick, which had the same writer (stone) and some of the same stars (George Kennedy, Walter Matthau, but with Gregory Peck instead of Cary Grant as hero), but which hasthe appropriate darkness (it’s even shot in black and white) is the much under-rated Mirage. I highly recommend it
Maybe not his best, but not mentioned yet so I’ll go ahead:
Frenzy
I really like this one. Classic “wrong guy accused” situation. You know from the get-go who the killer is and who it is not, so it’s not a murder mystery. The anxiety comes from wondering if the poor schmuck on hook for the murders (all evidence certainly points to him) can extricate himself from his circumstance.
Surely North by Northwest is disqualified from consideration by the stupidity of the most famous scene. Why lure Thornhill to the middle of nowhere, where you could just drive up and shoot him, but instead use the most inefficient method imaginable to attempt to kill him?
Similarly, in Psycho, Bates reveals that Marion Crane is only 10 miles from her destination yet she stays at the motel. Bet she regretted that.
I would think that was obvious. First of all, Thornhill isn’t “lured” anywhere. He goes to Van Damm’s house on his own free will to try to rescue Eve. Killing him there would raise questions once the body is discovered, but dropping him out an airplane would be hard to trace (it’s 1959, you understand). He ends up on Mount Rushmore because that’s where Thornhill runs when trying to escape.
Now, if you’re referring to the crop duster scene, the fact that the scene works as one of the greatest and most suspenseful scene in film has a lot to do with it. It works brilliantly, and no amount of nitpicking is going to change that.
Possibly, but staying there makes perfect sense: it’s late, she’s tired, and she has nowhere to stay when she gets to her destination anyway. The Bates Motel is as good as anywhere else from her point of view.
I haven’t seen probably even half his movies, but my favorite is Rebecca.
My least favorite was Suspicion. It’s just so anticlimactic (and, I think I’ve read, was given a quick rewrite at the end, to please some studio doofuses, which causes the anticlimax).
Damn you. I will have to watch it again. But surely killing someone on foot with a plane is ridiculous? Admittedly I haven’t seen the movie since I was a teen and apparently despite my qualms I have rated it a 9 on IMDB.
I agree. I had somehow missed seeing North by Northwest until recently. I was disappointed when I found the setup to such an iconic scene was so far-fetched.
Of course it presages all the unnecessarily complicated and unlikely plots Bond villains have hatched to try to kill 007.
I’ll tell you, it didn’t work for me, just because the whole thing was so insanely stupid. It was lazy plotting. If Hitchcock had set it up as the villains taking advantage of an unplanned opportunity, it would have worked much better for me. As a contrived plot, it was so implausible as to take me out of it. That’s not nitpicking, it’s a large flaw in the writing.
Dial M For Murder is one of my favorites, because Ray Milland is so deliciously, suavely amoral, and Robert Cummings is such an American Idiot. And Grace Kelly swans about as usual, but she does make a good victim.
If you can see it in 3D, you really should try it out. Hitchcock didn’t use 3D in the usual way, to throw things into the audience, but much more subtly, to give depth and texture to scenes that are essentially a filmed play.
Rear Window (I remember seeing this as a child and being enthralled and terrified) is another favorite. At last Grace Kelly gets to do something besides swan about. Everything about it just works, including the lighter moments.
I also really like The 39 Steps. I like the acting and direction, and the resolution of the plot hangs together pretty well. I don’t think the plot of the book would have made as tight a movie.
Most of the other movies mentioned are at least very watchable, if you want to take the trouble to suspend your disbelief (with North by Northwest I have a much bigger problem with how and why Thornhill and Eve Kendall just happened to meet on the train to Chicago.) Family Plot and Frenzy, though, are nearly unwatchable for me.
Roddy
If implausibility is such a no-no, then The Birds, Rear Window* and Strangers On A Train (among others) would have to be disqualified as great movies due to far-fetched plots.
*as a doubter says in this movie, who on earth would go about a crime in full view of dozens of other people without bothering to keep his window shades pulled down?