Top Five Favorite Hitchcock Films

1. Vertigo

2. Psycho

3. Rope

4. North by Northwest

5. The Birds

1. Psycho

2. Vertigo

3. Strangers on a Train

4. Shadow of a Doubt

5. The 39 Steps

Rebecca

Strangers on a Train

Shadow of a Doubt

Rear Window

North by Northwest

Someone's been watching TCM.

"Shadow of a Doubt" is on right now.

1. Psycho

2. Strangers on a Train

3. Shadow of a Doubt

4. The Birds

5. Rope

To Catch A Thief

It gave Grace Kelly some needed practice driving those tight curves on the Côte d'Azur.

I recently watched The Birds for the first time. It started out good but I was quite annoyed when the film ended and we never find out why those fucking birds are raising Hell and killing everything in sight!

I've seen so many of Hitchcock's movies. I can't rank them all because some I haven't watched most of them in 10 plus years, but the handful that stick out (in no particular order) are:

REBECCA

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

NOTORIOUS (probably my fav)

DIAL M FOR MURDER

SUSPICION

Shadow of a Doubt

North By Northwest

Rebecca

Rear Window

The Man Who Knew Too Much

But really, it's impossible to select just five, or even to rank them.

Notorious

North by Northwest

Rear Window

Strangers on A Train

Vertigo

Vertigo

The Lady Vanishes

The 39 Steps

North by Northwest

Shadow of A Doubt

5. To Catch a Thief

4. Rebecca

3. Vertigo

2. Spellbound

1. Notorious

Rear Window

North by Northwest

Shadow of a Doubt

Notorious

Rebecca

I can't decide!!!

But let me add the FIRST *Man Who Knew Too Much* where instead of wussy singing the child's mother's special skill is sharpshooting, which she deploys quite as effectively in the service of the law as Doris Day does "Que Sera Sera."

Strangers on a Train

Shadow of a Doubt

The Lady Vanishes

Spellbound (that one never gets enough attention)

Family Plot ( probably the only mention you'll see in these lists)

No love for Marnie? NO LOVE FOR MARNIE?!?

In no particular order:

(Second) Man who knew too much

Rear Window

To Catch a Thief

North by Northwest

Strangers on a Train

The Lady Vanishes

Rear Window

The Birds

Psycho

Marnie

Psycho

North By Northwest

Rear Window

Notorious

Spellbound

1. Rear Window

2. Psycho

3. Strangers on a Train

4. Vertigo

5. Notorious

In the realm of Hitchcock, The Birds is actually a mediocre film. Psycho, Rope and Strangers on a Train are all superior.

I have never understood the love for Vertigo. Like the guy really didn't know that it was Kim Novak the whole time? And how did the evil husband and Novak escape down the tower after throwing the wife off?

In no particular order:

Psycho

The Lady Vanishes

The 39 Steps

Rebecca

Spellbound

Rear Window

Dial M for Murder

North by Northwest

Strangers on a Train

The Trouble With Harry (for sentimental reasons)

Notorious North by Northwest Shadow of a Doubt Strangers on a Train Rear Window

1. Psycho (Absolute masterpiece. One of his rare endings that work. And how !)

2. Strangers on a train.

3. Rear Window ( I love the premise too bad the thriller collapses at the end)

4. Shadow of A Doubt

5. The Trouble With Harry ( I love New Hampshire in automn, so sue me !)

Vertigo would have made the cut if the end wasn't so insultingly stupid.

TCM had both Frenzy and Family Plot on recently, and I watched both of them for the first time since they were released. Definitely not first-tier Hitchcock, but still watchable.

Notorious

Psycho

The Birds

Rear Window

Vertigo

This is a list that would change for me depending on when I made it.

As of now:

1) Rear Window

2) Psycho

3) Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock's personal favorite BTW)

4) Vertigo

5) The Man Who Knew Too Much (remake)

5) Foreign Correspondent

4) The Man Who Knew Too Much (Stewart/Day)

3) Strangers On A Train

2) The Birds

1) Rear Window

Favorites to watch:

5. Strangers on a Train

4. Thirty-Nine Steps

3. Notorious

2. North by Northwest

1. Rear Window

HIs best in terms of film art (the best are not always the ones I can watch over and over):

5. Thirty-Nine Steps

4. Rear Window

3. The Birds

2. Psycho

1. Vertigo

Rear Window North by Northwest Psycho Strangers on a Train The Boyds

Never could get into Vertigo either and want to because it's considered such a great movie but...

1. Shadow of a Doubt. Not as perfect a movie as Rebecca, but nearly so; and it certainly has the Hitchcockian feel rebecca lacks. The cast could not be better from top to bottom, with standouts being Patricia Collinge (above all) as the silly, fragile, adoring mother; Teresa Wright as her resourceful and surprisingly tough elder daughter; and Joseph Cotten as her despicable but magnetic brother. Also with one of the greatest of all Hitchcock suspense sequences when Wright races to the town library, which is just about to close, to find out just what story her uncle tore out of the newspaper...

2. Rebecca. Does not have the typical Hitchcockian feel, but otherwise a genuinely great movie--one of the best of all movies ever made in Hollywood. Career best film performances from Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson, and one of the all-time great Hollywood scores, by Franz Waxman.

3. Vertigo. Beautifully constructed and filmed, with a great, breathtaking story, a superb supporting performance by Barbara Bel Geddes, and another great score (this time by Bernard Herrmann). Marred only by the obvious mannequin substituting for Madeline Elstir in the tower scene midway through the movie.

4. Psycho. Probably takes more risks in terms of constructing a narrative than any of Hitchcock's films, and it mostly pays off. The two big murders of Janet Leigh and Martin Balsam are still shocking and thrillingly edited (as is the sequence when the bank manager recognizes Janet Leigh in the car when he is in the crosswalk), all these years later, and there's a great small comic role for Hitchcock's daughter Pat at the bank. It also has hilarious dialogue (which you don't really notice until you see it the first two times) for Norman's mother ("Candlelight? Whispers?").

5. Foreign Correspondent. The culmination of Hitchcock's 30s fascination with espionage and intrigue, with some of he greatest of all Hitchcock bits of business in any of his film: the windmill with the sails going the wrong way; the assassination among the umbrellas in the rain; and bst of all, that jaw-dropping plane crash sequence in the ocean.

Honorable mention: Marnie. Flawed in almost every way, but perhaps the most compulsively watchable for all its errors and shortcomings. Another great supporting performance (this time from Diane Baker), and another of Bernard Herrmann's greatest scores (especially during the hunt sequence).

Top five:

Lifeboat

Psycho

Foreign Correspondent

The 39 Steps

Shadow of a Doubt

Next five:

Rear Window

Strangers on a Train

The Birds

To Catch a Thief

Frenzy

Honorable mention:

Notorious

The Lady Vanishes

Rebecca

Rope

Saboteur

What a treasure trove!

Other directors such as Billy Wilder or John Ford or Michael Curtiz or Orson Welles or William Wyler may have been "better," Oscar-winning directors, but I would be hard-pressed to name 15 of their movies off the top of my head…

1. Rear Window 2. Vertigo 3. Psycho 4. Notorious 5. Rebecca

The definitive list. Do I get a prize?

I really love Mr and Mrs Smith.

Notorious and Rear Window are essentially perfect. Psycho is nearly perfect except for the campy ending.

Saboteur was on TCM today, with the now 106-year-old Norman Lloyd.

It took me a long time to get into Vertigo. Once I saw the film as a dream rather than a conventional movie, I appreciated it more.

Nothing else has had the cultural impact of Psycho. A nearly perfect film that has stood the test of time.

Runner ups would be North by Northwest, Rear Window, Rebecca, Notorious.

Vertigo could be interesting as an erotic dream if the leading man had any sex appeal.

I think that's another reason for the success of Psycho, that the cast is for the most part attractive, and there is a sexual/naughty aspect to some of the scenes. Even Vera Miles was quite a pretty actress, though she was purposely dressed in frumpy, unsexy clothes by Hitchcock in this film, probably to play up Janet Leigh's sexiness by comparison.

Shadow of a DOubt

Rear Window

The Birds

Notorious/Rebecca

Psycho - I know how bad this sounds but I need get Psycho. It's filmed like one of his television shows, and Perkins is a very uninteresting actor. Only Janet Leigh is interesting but then she's dead. I can't get into it.

No love for Under Capricorn or The Paradine Case or The Wrong Man ( a very well film with good performances by Fonda and Miles)?

1. Shadow of a Doubt

2. Sabotage

3. Psycho

4. Frenzy

5. Young and Innocent

In fact Hitchcock did use his television crew to film Psycho, and used standard focal length lenses (no wide angle or telephoto shots), to purposely give it an ordinary, everyday look and not a cinematic look.

Not the best, but my faves:

1. ROPE.

2. YOUNG AND INNOCENT.

3. NOTORIOUS.

4. NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

5. STAGE FRIGHT.

Thank you, R23, for including The Trouble With Harry. I had to watch it last month to reinforce the New England autumn. But then I read that they scheduled filming a week too late, and had to glue fake colored leaves onto all the trees, so we're seeing art, not nature.

Psycho

The Birds

Rebecca

North by Northwest

Frenzy

1. Vertigo

2. Rear Window

3. Rope

4. The Man Who New Too Much (remake)

5. North by Northwest

I love Notorious, Rebecca, Psycho too, but ultimately I'm a sucker for those saturated Technicolor dreamscapes...even Dial M for Murder.

R48 Miss Lucy, I assume your kitties love it when you watch The Birds!

R50 It's funny, when they hear the birds make any sort of sound, or even birds in other movies or documentaries, they'll arrive and look around the room, wondering where the sound is coming from. I often find one of those "kitty shows" on Youtube, showing a flock of birds cackling and chattering and flapping around, and they're totally mesmerized. Sometimes they'll swat at the screen and often they'll look behind the computer screen to see if they're hiding there.

Looking back over his credits on IMDB I realize I really don't like Hitchcock that much. The Birds is the only film of his I can watch over and over again. I think it's his most perfect film, genuinely thrilling and original. I was SO disappointed when I went to Bodega Bay and it was nothing like that.

I like The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) because Peter Lorre is so awesome in it. Gomez Addams come to life.

Notorious, for Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains.

Rear Window, near-perfect film but a little too artificial.

Psycho, perfect for about the first half hour, then it becomes a William Castle picture.

Off-topic I know, but R51 one of my cats has no interest in birds. He prefers videos of mice and chippers.

Lifeboat is my favorite Hitchcock picture, I laughed and cried and bit my nails all the way through. And I think it is the best cinematic record of Tallulah Bankhead, except for maybe her appearance on the Lucy- Desi Comedy Hour ha ha.

[quote]I was SO disappointed when I went to Bodega Bay and it was nothing like that.

Me too!

I aways forget about Lifeboat as it seems so much more like a Tallulah Bankhead picture rather than a Hitchcock film....but yes, it's brilliant!

R43, [italic]Under Capricorn[/italic] had one redeeming feature: Michael Wilding's performance. Of the Hitchcock movies I've watched all the way through, it's the worst. I admit I've never been able to watch [italic]Vertigo, Spellbound, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith[/italic] in full.

A director who made that many movies is bound to have a few stinkers.

Yet despite any supposed stinkers, the 42 posters on this thread are able to name a dozen or more of his movies off the top of our heads

psycho psycho psycho for gods sake, and the birds, maybe marnie.

the rest......meh

Amd which of the rest have you seen, R59?

[quote]they scheduled filming a week too late, and had to glue fake colored leaves onto all the trees, so we're seeing art, not nature.

That’s disappointing to hear, I still love the movie though

1. Vertigo

2. Rebecca

3. Strangers on a Train

4. Psycho

5. Shadow of. Doubt

Top Five (For LGBTQ Interest):

1. MURDER!

2. ROPE.

3. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

4. THE BIRDS.

5. REBECCA.

Is the (non-Hitchcock) remake of "The Lady Vanishes" any good? I saw it was available on Amazon.

1.The Thirty-Nine Steps

2. The Lady Vanishes

3. Suspicion

4. To Catch a Thief

5. Spellbound

To Catch a Thief

Dial M for Murder

The 39 Steps

Under Capricorn

Vertigo

Mah' favorites:

1. Rear Window

2. Rebecca

3. Psycho

4. North by Northwest

5. The Lady Vanishes

And mah' least favorites:

1. Topaz

2. Stage Fright

3. The Paradine Case

4. The Trouble with Harry

5. Young and Innocent

1 Psycho. (absolutely lurid and very influential)

2 The Birds (horrifying with a camp edge)

3 Rear Window (perverse)

4 To Catch a Thief (its just so darn pretty)

5. Stage Fright (Dietrich fan here), The Trouble with Harry (very easy and pleasant to watch. Nice tone), Vertigo (his greatest film but not my favorite)

R64, A British remake with Keeley Hawes of the Durrells playing the paramour of the married attorney, that version is OK, but of course it lacks spark and snap of the original.

However, the remake with Cybil Shepherd and Elliot Gould is truly wretched, but it is watchable in that car wreck kind of way, Cybil tried playing madcap in several different movies, but she never quite gets there..

I never forget that Hitchcock was raised a Catholic. I think " I, Confess" -1953 and " The Wrong Man "-1956 are very underrated. As is the great "Saboteur"-1942 with a script by Dorothy Parker. And although I like watching " Dial M For Murder"- I always get lost in the key exchange. And it feels more like a play than "Rope".

Vertigo

Notorious

Rear Window

North By Northwest

To Catch A Thief