What are your Top Five Alfred Hitchcock Movies?

Cafe Society
21

Psycho
Rear Window
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
Frenzy

Didn’t quite make the cut: Suspicion, North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, The Birds. Never cared much for Vertigo, despite its high reputation.

22

Rear Window is one of my all-time favorite films, so that gets my #1 pick, natch.

Lifeboat is my favorite of his “experimental” films (meaning films that Hitchcock built around a particular film-making device or gimmick.) This would be on my list just for Tallulah Bankhead’s performance alone.

For favorite overlooked gem, I’ll go with Torn Curtain. It’s true that Paul Newman and Julie Andrews don’t have a lot of chemistry (Andrews is particularly miscast), but the film still has some spectacular suspense set-pieces, and one of the single-most nerve wracking murder scenes ever.

Notorious is definitely up there on the list.

And for the fifth, I’ll opt for “North by Northwest”, just for the sheer black humor bravado of it all. (“Are you trying to kill my son?”)

23
  1. North By Northwest
  2. Vertigo
  3. Rear Window
  4. Marnie
  5. The Trouble With Harry
24

The 39 Steps
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, accept no substitutes)
North by Northwest
Rear Window
Lifeboat