I recently saw “North by Northwest” for the first time. I must saw I’m undewhelmed.
But it got me thinking, what is the best Hitchcock movie?
I admit I haven’t seen them all, but I’ve seen most.
My favorite was “Rear Window” and my dark horse favorite in 2nd place is “Rope.”
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I have to bump Rope to #1 on my list - both the body and the murder weapon are apparent in every scene - something lost on a lot of people. The 39 Steps is good (the original is MUCH better than his remake. And, don’t forget one of his earliest films, Sabotage !!!
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I don’t know about best but the one I most want to see again is the generally forgotten Mr and Mrs Smith with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery. It’s a terrific 1941 screwball comedy that I was reminded of because Brad Pitt is making a movie with the same name. It should IMHO be better regarded and proves that Hitchcock could turn his hand to anything.
I’m glad to see “Rope” mentioned. I rarely see that one on any of the Hitchcock’s best lists. I’d go with “Vertigo” #1, and “Rope” #2. Of course there are a LOT of hitchcock movies I haven’t seen yet.
Couldn’t possibly pick my one favorite, let alone the “best.” Here is his filmography, to hammer home my point . . .
I don’t know about being the “Best” but my personal favorites are Notorius (perfect movie IMHO) and Marnie.
J. Green
smokinjbc@msn.com
I once rated NBNW as one of my all-time top ten films. But I saw it recently and its faults seemed more glaring than before; particularly the rather ridiculous plot and weak ending: faults shared by many Hitchcock films. It’s still a pretty enjoyable flick though.
If I had to pick Hitch’s best I think it would be Notorious. It has perhaps the best ending of any Hitch film and some marvellous suspense sequences especially with the Unica key and the wine-cellar.
It is very difficult to pick a best, and it certainly depends on my mood.
Today, I’ll go with North by Northwest. Tomorrow, it might be **Psycho{/b] or Rear Window.
Hi all,
Just a note, I know how to spell *Notorious * , wish we could edit this board (or maybe I should just learn to preview).
I also enjoyed Rope as well- for some reason I have never been able to finish Psycho , and not because I’m scared either :dubious: .
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Looking through that list, there are some AWESOME films I never even considered. Hmmm . . . The Birds (Look at the cast - what a who’s who of acting at that time). Story goes, that Morgan Brittany, who played one of the children who was in the film, went to Hitch and said she was scared. Seems like they were going to fasten a live bird to her shoulder for one scene and she was afraid that the bird was going to kill her. Hitch, in his standard understated tone said “Don’t worry, Little Girl. It’s your last scene anyway!”
Dial “M” for Murder - Hitch’s only 3-D film. Each scene is exactly the same length (10 minutes each, IIRC) because that’s how long the film in the canister lasted. It took a long while to reset the camera equipment for each shot, so Hitch minimized the camera movement by only using a couple of different camera setups and filmed all scenes from that angle at the same time!
I can’t remember the name of the movie where the little boy is running all over London with a timebomb in his backpack. This is one of the classic ways in which Hitch created suspense. I believe he once said “If you’re watching a movie, and a bomb goes off, it’s a surprise. If you’re watching a movie and you KNOW there’s a bomb waiting to go off, it’s suspense.”
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what about Vertigo?
People sometimes forget that Rebecca is a Hitchcock movie, and the only one he directed to get the Best Picture Oscar. For many years in my teens and twenties it was my favorite movie, period.
I think Vertigo is his best, but I also like Rope and think it improves with age. Also, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train and a forgotten classic, The Wrong Man.
I hated “Rope.” Loathed it. There was no suspense whatsoever, just a complete grossout factor. I thought it was just plain stupid and repulsive. And I really wanted to like it, since there was a personal “connection”, as it were, seeing as my great uncle was the musical director. I even saw it on the big screen when a local arthouse theater did a Hitchcock revival and showed 5 of his films over the course of a couple of months. It is the only one I flat out hated. Ugh.
My favorite is “Dial M For Murder,” followed by “Shadow of a Doubt,” and “The Birds.”
You’ve confused Rope for Dial M for Murder.
Rope, for those who don’t know, is loosely based on the true story of the Leopold and Loeb murder case. It was shot in ten-minute takes in an effort to minimize the obviousness of cuts. The technique is sometimes obvious. Not a perfect movie by any means; and a subject of perennial debate among Hitchcock fans, but a movie I like much better now than when I first saw it over 20 years ago.
Rope is an admirable experiment that succeeds on some levels–mostly technical–but a flawed film. John Dall gives one of the most irredeemably bad performances ever capture on film, which is odd because he was good in Gun Crazy. Maybe that’s because GC has a certain absurd surrealism that fit his style better.
Hitchcock said that he considered Shadow of a Doubt (1943), the story of a serial murderer hiding behind the normalcy of an American town, his favorite.
I’d put “Rope” on my list of favorites, too, I think. I became totally obsessed with it over the summer…I’ve got pretty much the whole movie memorized. Really awesome.
I am definitely not an authority, but of the ones I’ve seen, I would have to say a tie between ‘North By Northwest’ and ‘Rope’.
I always liked the amateur James Bond aspect of NBN, and how Cary Grant always got out of scrapes using the trappings of his prosperous executive life (using the handkerchief to survive the crop dusting, and the monogrammed matchbook to alert Eve).
Jimmy Stewart is magnificent in ‘Rope’. His character starts out almost fascist, with his diatribes on murdering bad waiters. But the horrific events cause him to re-examine his beliefs, all the without losing his moral center.
Incidentally, am I the only person on the planet who didn’t like ‘Vertigo’? It’s not that anything about it bothered me – I was just (to reuse a word in the OP) underwhelmed.
Nobody has mentioned The Trouble With Hary . That certainly ranks high on my list.