Was wondering if there are any Hitchcock fans out there and what your favorite films are.
Mine are:
The Lady Vanishes: “I’m almost willing to believe there’s a rational explanation to all this.” is one of favorite lines from any movie.
North by Northwest: I would have really liked to have seen the scene Hitchcock envisioned in Detroit where you see a car being built along an assembly line and when it gets to the end, a dead body falls out.
Psycho, Rope, Rear Window and Shadow of a Doubt also rank way up there.
I love Lifeboat (how could I not, with Tallulah Bankhead?), The Birds (Tippi Hedren looked so chic and stylish, even covered in bird poop), his tense WWII trilogy, Shadow of a Doubt, Saboteur and Suspicion), Rear Window . . .
My opinions: The Birds is his scariest film (and one of the scariest movies ever, if you ask me)
Vertigo is his “best” film, in that it’s the most relevant, and all of his directorial genius is used to the fullest, and it’s got a killer soundtrack. But like Odinoneeye said, I don’t like watching it.
Rear Window is my favorite. It’s dark and suspenseful, but funny too. And there’s a sense of justice and “right”-ness about the whole thing; one of the themes is how people are by nature voyeuristic and self-serving, but by the end you feel that the message is that people are basically good. And Grace Kelly is astoundingly hot.
Notorious is my favorite. It has one of his most suspenseful moments, the party with the wine going faster than Ingrid Bergman expected so she worries that she won’t get the key to the wine cellar back to Claude Raines in time.
Psycho is his only real horror movie, and is one of the few that has ever scared me.
I saw Dial M for Murder in 3-D once. If you ever get a chance, see it that way, it is not to be believed how much better it becomes.
Hmm. I haven’t seen too many Hitchcock films recently and I suspect that I won’t like some of them now as much as I remember. I think the last one I saw was Notorious about a year back and it was excellent. A great DVD release by Criterion as well.
Rear Window – Grace Kelly’s entrance may be my favorite bit of film ever, from anywhere.
Notorious – Bergman and Grant look simply ravishing, and Raines makes an incredibly sympathetic villain.
Then The Lady Vanishes, Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo (which I admire more every time I see, but still haven’t grown to really love), and Rope (which is stagey as hell and full of hokey dialogue, but works wonderfully anyway – “the something of something, or is it just something?”)
Major Hitchcock fan here. I’ve seen all of them except Marnie, Lifeboat, and Frenzy, I think. I think his real masterpieces are Vertigo and Notorious (and I love for personal reasons Shadow of a Doubt), but I have to say that my favorite, in terms of the one I would most like to watch again right now, is The Trouble With Harry.
Darkest comedy/funniest dark comedy ever? It gets my vote.
I forgot The Trouble With Harry. How could I forget that!
Seeing Jerry Mathers in his pre-Beaver days is priceless. The rest of the movie is wonderful too.
Also, I really liked Family Plot. I know this isn’t one of his most critically acclaimed films, most accounts of it claim that he was already pretty sick when he directed it and didn’t put much effort into it. But I loved the narrative style of it. Early on the audience is told exactly what’s going on, but none of the characters do. So they make bad decisions based on faulty informatoin and you can only sit by and watch them screw up.
One of my favorites is he stateside remake of “Saboteur.”
There is palpable tension in that scene where the protagonist is trying to unlink his handcuffs against the car engine’s pulley while another vehicle approaches. His patent risk and bodily endangerment is well compensated with fear of apprehension, chance of discovery and desire for freedom. A superb cinematographic balancing act if ever there was. Add to this, so much seemingly innocuous banter and flirting that goes on between the central characters which creates a strong and engaging subtext of individual judgment and personal loyalty.
Hitchcock’s own morbid fear of wrongful accusation and arrest is outlined with broad strokes in this film. The plot’s wartime context lends it far greater significance than such subject matter might have enjoyed until recently. The ending’s final confrontation of good and evil (at the Statue of Liberty) merely provides valuable iconographic reinforcement while employing intensely useful constructs that cement any moralizing present.
Whatever questions exist concerning Hitch’s attention to detail should include a thorough examination of the shower scene in “Psycho.” The shower curtain being torn slowly from its rings as the slender thread of life is parted is no accident. Meticulous planning of every camera angle and scene was a signature of Hitch’s work and something he attributed to his school work while being trained as a draftsman and engineer at the Royal Academy.
Rebecca, hands down. I own just about every film Hitchcock made since this 1940 masterpiece, and in my humble opinion Rebecca remains the smoothest piece of work he ever created. Pure perfection.
<i>“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.”</i>
I checked in but see there is nothing left to say.
He was nominated for the Oscar for best director 6 times for: Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Spellbound (1945), Lifeboat (1944), Suspicion (1941) and Rebecca (1940) (God bless the IMDB) and never won.
That is a crime.
Also see that he had to stand at the foot of his mother’s bed and recount his day and he used that in Psycho as APerkins does the same thing.
Rear Window - I love that set, and all the little plots involving the neighbors. Long after I lost interest in Raymond Burr’s missing wife, I like to watch this again and again just to follow what’s going on behind all those other windows.
Rope - It’s got its flaws (what with the camera going behind someone’s back every 10 minutes), but I also like the set here and the real-time filming. Plus, the heavy homoerotic overtones when the killers talk about what it feels like to commit murder, and it really sounds like they’re talking about… er… something else.
Spellbound - If just for the Dali sequence, and Bergman and Peck looking adorable in their jammies as they stare at each other and start to breathe heavily. (It’s an incredibly sexy scene for people who aren’t even touching each other!)
Rebecca and Suspicion - I think of the first as more David O. Selznick’s film than Hitchcock’s, and the second as Hitchcock’s response to it, but I enjoy them both immensely. The suspense, the suspicion, and in the second, the always-charming Cary Grant at his most charming.
Strangers on a Train - Robert Walker is wonderful and terrifying to watch.
Shadow of a Doubt - “Our Town” with serial killer.
My two favorites are more a matter of circumstance than anything else. The two movies I saw at the Castro Theater (I used to live about four blocks away) were: Rear Window and Dial M for Murder, complete with the antique Wurlitzer organ coming up from the floor before the movie, with the dude playing Hitchcock’s theme. It always got a cheer.
AND … Dial M for Murder was presented in 3D, with the glasses and everything. That was cool.
I like them all, there’s a Hitchcock film for whatever mood I’m in. If I’m a bit down and introspective, there’s VERTIGO or REAR WINDOW. If I’m up and cheerful, there’s TROUBLE WITH HARRY or NORTH BY NORTHWEST or TO CATCH A THIEF. My wife gets all romantic over NOTORIOUS and REBECCA.
And, I have to add, I actually met Hitchcock, spent an afternoon with him back in 1966 (right before TOPAZ, I think, which is NOT high on the list.)