Best Hitchcock Movie

The Lady Vanishes.

R1- I have never watched this movie, so thank you for making me aware of it.

I have a special place in my heart for Hitchcock’s swan song, Family Plot.

I don't know that I'm knowledgeable enough about all of Hitchcock films to make a determination, his version of Rebecca with the shouty Laurence Olivier (though it would surprise no one that he killed someone) is hands down the best version.

Strangers On A Train and Vertigo are his best, I think.

Rebecca, Psycho, Rope, Strangers on a Train. The birds was my least favorite Hitchcock film.

Forgot to add Dial M for Murder.

The Birds is his gayest movie follow by TCAT

The Birds is my least favorite Hitchcock movie. I always thought it was boring and silly. How are little birds frightening to anyone?

I haven’t seen many of Hitchcock’s early films pre-1940 but I would have to go with Torn Curtain as Hitch’s most boring movie. Maybe if he was able to re-cast the two leads with two leads that have actual chemistry, and he kept the Bernard Herrmann score that was completed then the movie might actually have some much needed tension.

Of those listed, I chose North by Northwest. But my favorite is Shadow of a Doubt.

Frenzy

Shadow of a Doubt. How could you leave it off your list, OP?

I believe Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock's personal favorite and it is not on the list!

Another vote for Shadow of Doubt! I'd love to see a remake of it. I mean in a way that works today. I loved the remake of Dial M for Murder with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow. My second choice is The Birds, and my third is Rear Window.

I’m aware I’m in the minority but I think Vertigo is one of his worst.

R16, I'm not a fan of Vertigo either.

I have never really liked Vertigo either, but I have watched Shadow of a Doubt at least ten times and will watch it every time it comes on TV.

I never knew that Robert Walker was married to Jennifer Jones and they had two sons. What a tragic death and at such a young age. Damn, his doctor killed him.

The 39 Steps

Sabotage

Saboteur

Foreign Correspondent

Frenzy

I am shocked that as much as I love Hitchcock movies there are several posted here that I was unaware of. Looking forward to watching them.

R14 whoever edited that trailer has amazing talent. Flawless!

That trailer is indeed terrific. Such a great movie and one of my favorites. I voted for Vertigo though for some years The Birds was my favorite. There are several articles and books written about it, but it is a primal movie even without reading them (Robin Wood book is very good for anyone interested).

I always had a soft spot for Marnie as well. With Hitchcock even the minor movies have some gold in it.

They remade Shadow of a Doubt in 1991 and Mark Harmon played the role of Uncle Charlie. It's free on youtube.

There was another B-movie remake in the late 50's called STEP DOWN TO TERROR, with Charles Drake in the Joseph Cotten role. Not worth watching.

Notorious gets my vote.

I loved [italic]Shadow of a Doubt[/italic]. It was rarely seen for some reason. I loved [italic]Rear Window[/italic] and [italic]North by Northwest[/italic], but realizing I hadn't seen most of his films, I made a project of renting them. Most of them have some redeeming feature, i.e., [italic]Topaz[/italic] is definitely lesser Hitchcock but it has Roscoe Lee Browne.

I rewatched Vertigo last year after a trip to SF and the Bay Area. I think the storyline and the characters were lacking (and Kim Novak's bad acting), but it's a classic for the atmosphere and location shots.

I did have fun at Muir Woods, though, pointing to the redwood tree rings and saying "Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice." I did it in my best Kim Novak accent. I know, MARY!

What am I? Chopped Liver?!?

Almost everyHitchcock movie, even the misfires, has something memorable. Torn Curtain, an utter dud, still has the death-by-gas-oven scene, one of the most unnerving murder scenes on film. And the completely forgotten Paradine Case has a great performance by Charles Laughton as a sadistic judge.

I'd never heard of "Step Down to Terror": what a great title, I prefer that to "Shadow of a Doubt."

I always liked Joseph Cotton and think he was an underrated actor. Never nominated for an oscar.

Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors, so it's impossible for me to pick only one. So much depends on my mood at any given moment.

Of those listed in the poll, it's probably a toss-up between [bold]Psycho[/bold] and [bold]Notorious[/bold], with [bold]Vertigo[/bold] and [bold]The Birds[/bold] as runners-up.

These are favorites of mine that are NOT listed in the poll, in chronological order:

[bold]The 39 Steps[/bold], [bold]Foreign Correspondent[/bold], [bold]Shadow of a Doubt[/bold], [bold]Lifeboat[/bold], [bold]Strangers on a Train[/bold] (rates high on my list), [bold]I Confess[/bold] and [bold]Frenzy[/bold].

His filmography is an embarrassment of riches.

Our young OP has managed to leave several of Hitchcock's best films, most of which have already been mentioned:

SHADOW OF A DOUBT

THE LADY VANISHES

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

THE 39 STEPS

And a couple of my personal favorites:

LIFE BOAT

FAMILY PLOT

Another vote for Lifeboat, I never get tired of watching it.

r35 = Ethel Mertz

“Psycho” is a wonderfully twisted movie, but by far his most fucked up film is “Marnie”.

Shadow of a Doubt

Without a shadow if a doubt…!

I remember not liking "Rear Window" when I first saw it 20 or 30 years ago. So you guys convinced me to rewatch it, since you all voted it his #1. I still don't get it - I thought it was boring. Certainly no "North by Northwest"!

A toss up between THE BIRDS, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and NOTORIOUS.

By no means among his best work, but there are two more no one has mentioned:

Young and Innocent

The Trouble with Harry

My favorite is Shadow Of A Doubt, and I picked Psycho but Notorious is right up there too.

I find Vertigo a bore and vastly overrated. It's one of my least favorite Hitchcock movies.

Though not great, I also love Foreign Correspondent because it's two hours of hunky Joel McRae.

Has anyone yet mentioned SPELLBOUND with Ingrid Bergman and a luscious young Gregory Peck? I love that one even if minor Hitchcock.

CHARADE (1963) Audrey Hepburn looked terrible as a “cool blond”, so was permitted to keep her chestnut tresses. Hitch also released THE BIRDS the same year.

Shadow of a Doubt (which was also Hitchcock's favorite among his movies)

The Best Hitchcock movie is "Shadow of a Doubt".

Yes, "Charade" that's a great Hitchcock film.

If Hitchcock had made a film starring Wayne Morris, then that would be my favorite of his films.

Best cock movies??

What’s the hitch?

I love Saboteur. It feels like pure American propaganda. Apple pie faced Richard Cummings against the wealthy intellectual spies who snivel at the common people. The kind old blind man who lives in a cabin alone helps him to hide and spouts a bunch of philosophical stuff. I think that scene was penned by a famous writer whose name I forget. One of the spies was supposed to be gay I think. Something about him having long blonde curls as a child. The scene with the circus freaks is gold. Someone said they’re supposed to represent the different European countries. The hotheaded midget is supposed to be hitler of course.

CHARADE was directed by Stanley Donen not Hitchcock. Many critics call it “the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made”.

Tough one! But I voted Vertigo because of how it captures the absolute tragedy of falling in love with a mirage. I didn't see the twist coming but I found it, and it's aftermath, captivating.

R29, thank you. Marnie always gets left out of Hitchcock discussions. Why? Flawed but great movie, and Sean Connery at peak hotness.

R52, Robert “Bob” Cummings, not Richard

[quote]I think that scene was penned by a famous writer whose name I forget.

I think Dorothy Parker had a hand in writing a couple of scenes in Sabateur.

r56 yep, sorry. I was drunk and half asleep when I wrote that.

[quote] Many critics call it “the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made”.

I would give that honor to Malle's Elevator To The Gallows.

Perhaps Vertigo’s mainstay at the top of so many “Best Of” and “Greatest Films of all Time” lists such as Sight and Sound puts an unnecessary burden on it, as those lists tend to do.

For me, I first saw Vertigo as a 10 year old when I was discovering my love of old movies and Hitchcock. Having no knowledge of the film or the plot or the twist, and not having been overexposed to its appearance on every best film of all time list, my little mind was blown away. First of all, for the first half of the film, it had me convinced that Madeleine really was possessed by the spirit of Carlotta Valdes. I believed that Madeleine did walk into that inn and up to the second floor, and disappeared like a ghost. It gave me the creeps seeing her walking in the forest and seemingly vanishing behind a redwood tree. I had seen a handful of other Hitchcock films at that point, but this (at first) had a seemingly supernatural bent to it that surprised me. And then when the twist came, I had no idea it was coming. Jimmy Stewart’s nightmare sequence gave me the willies but the moment that really startled me was at the very end when he and Madeleine are at the top of the bell tower. Out of nowhere the music stops and they both look over to see this black figure coming towards them, as if it were some Angel of death. It turns out to be one of the nuns who heard voices in the tower, but it frightens the bejesus out of Madeleine who then falls off of the bell tower.

I was too young to really know what the movie is really “about” or understood its themes, but i was bewitched by it in a way I couldn’t really explain. And still can’t. It immediately became my favorite Hitchcock and I became obsessed with it for a while. The languid pace, the colors, the MUSIC. I’m not sure what I’d say is Hitchcock’s BEST film. Some days it’s either Strangers on a Train or Rebecca, some days it’s Psycho. Vertigo will always be the one that left the biggest impression on me.

R60 A lot of people don’t know Vertigo was shown 2 times on CBS prime time - as was The Man Who Knew Too Much - back in the early or mid-70s. I was about 14 or 15 - I loved Vertigo and continue to.

Actually I’m not sure of the network.

I'm surprised many here are citing REBECCA as their favorite Hitchcock as many film lovers, scholars and even Hitchcock himself have said it was more of a David O Selznick film than a Hitchcock film. Which is not to say it isn't brilliant.

I watched REBECCA a couple of years ago - hadn't seen it in quite some time. It's very overrated and Joan Fontaine makes her character much more simpering than the one in the novel. It's also not one of Oliver's better performances.

I’ve always had a soft spot for The Trouble with Harry, but my real favourites are Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt (his photography and direction have never been neater and crisper), and The 39 Steps (and if you get through the casual antisemitism, Buchan’s original novel is also a good read).

Olivier had a tendency to ham it up at times. Hitchcock wasn’t an actor’s director and didn’t rein him in like he should have.

Shadow of a Doubt is also my favorite.

Suspicion

The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions)

Stage Fright

Jamaica Inn (a critical flop, a personal favorite of mine)

Stage Fright??

Bwahahahahah!

R60, that was a great post. Vertigo is like a demented fairy tale, you have to suspend disbelief a lot and is best approached without expectations. A lot of comments on it I suspect are from people with high expectations. But, to me, it is a wonderful movie, with a handful of sequences that are difficult to find in a movie. It is also a movie of how you project yourself on something that doesn’t exist, which is a theme most people are familiar at a certain point. Of course the overall plot doesn’t stand for much reality scrutiny, but i can live with that.

Rebecca is a great movie but i always found it the least Hitchcockian one.

In Stage Fright Hitchcock came under fire for (rightfully) filing a sequence that did not take place. I don’t remember a movie where this has happened. That said, the interactions between mousy Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich are marvelous. “ please dont confide in me dear, jiust pour the tea”.

In my mind, "Vertigo" and "Psycho" are tied for the top spot, they're very different films but each is brilliant, I wouldn't change a frame!

Other personal faves include "Shadow of a Doubt", "Saboteur", "STrangers on a Train", and "Spellbound".

I seem to be the only one here who likes "Spellbound", and I can see why, the psychiatry as portrayed in the film is complete nonsense, and the Dali dream sequence looks silly now. But Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck provide enough star power to make it worth watching, they're both at the height of their beauty, the young Peck never looked lovelier! And I live stories about people dropping their daily lives and running off to solve a mystery, and it's one of the few films of the early 20th century where the female character is unabashedly The Hero. She's unabashedly intelligent, independent, courageous, and professional, and doesn't back down when confronted by a male psychiatrist. That's unique for screen women of the era, particularly since male psychiatrists were usually portrayed as godlike.

I really like I Confess but I know it's not one of Hitch's greats. There's very unlikely central coincidence in the plot. I once saw it with an audience, though, and most people seemed to really enjoy it and it got a big round of applause at the end. Montgomery Clift and Karl Malden have a great scene.

The Lux Radio Theatre version of Spellbound with Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli is really very good. Valli acts her ass off in it, it's one of the best Lux performances I've heard.

r71, I posted about my love for SPELLBOUND just 30 replies upthread.

It's easier to pick a Hitchcock film that you don't particularly like -there are so few (for me, at least). Count me as a big fan of North By Northwest, The Trouble With Harry, Family Plot, Spellbound, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds, Lifeboat -and the list goes on. I do want to add my anonymous name to those who speak up for redeeming features in Torn Curtain. The farmhouse death scene is really disturbing and far more gruesome that anything shown onscreen at the time. Also, the bus chase scene is Hitchcock at his best -suspense and humor going back and forth, keeping you on the edge of your seat.

The worst Hitchcock film is still better than most of what Hollywood releases.

I think Hitchcock hit his peak in the three-year period of 1958-1960 (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho). Three extraordinary films.

R76 I think Rear Window was as good as any of those three.

Notorious may be his most sophisticated. Very mature themes, top acting and a master craftsman working within a well-oiled studio machine really delivers the goods.

Everybody is getting ready to declare war on Mexico.

That was one of my favorites

The Birds.

I Didn't like the ending of the birds. I wanted them all to die getting their eyes pecked out and the birds taking over everything.

No one ever mentions it, but I love the 1934 "The Man Who Knew Too Much". I just find early 30's Germany fascinating and Peter Lorre is great in anything.

I notice that the 1956 film of the same name is also never mentioned.

I like both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much but especially the 1956 version. I think it's an underrated film of Hitchcock's. I think Doris Day was a little young to play a woman who had been a famous stage star, who then gave it up to marry and now has a child who's about 10 years old. But her performance is one of the best in any Hitchcock film.

What about some of his early films? Blackmail 1929 was pretty good. A sound version was filmed, but Anny Ondra, being Polish, was dubbed in live by an offstage actress. I love the scene at 49 minutes with the cockney broad overemphasizing the word knife. Brilliant use of the new sound technology.

knife! ... knife!... KNIFE!

[quote]I notice that the 1956 film of the same name is also never mentioned.

Que Sera, Sera

Notice again, R83. I mentioned it at 75.

And, yes, Doris Day gave a very fine performance. I don't think she was too young -I think Mr. Stewart was a bit too old.

R84 is the first DL poster to ever claim Doris Day was too young for any role .

R88 Doris was 34. She was playing a former stage musical star, she says she's played on the London stage, the Paris stage. Now she has a kid who's around 10 (the actor playing Hank was 10). Which means she's been married around 11 years or more. So she got married when she was 23, and retired from her stage career. She had this big career prior to age 23, which is hard to believe, because she would have had to work her way up.

R88 Stewart was 47 when the film was made so assuming his character is the same age, he became a father at 37. Being a doctor he had a lot of training to go through first, so, not much of a stretch.

Jimmy Stewart was old before he was old. I never think of him as young. I think he should have never been coupled with Doris Day unless he played her pervy uncle or her father.

You never think of him as young because I guess you never watch his '30s movies. Other than June Allyson, most of Stewart's leading ladies in the '50s were younger than Doris Day. Stewart and Day made a good couple.

International stage star and singing sensation by age 23?

It happens.

Retired by age 23.

International stage star and singing sensation by age 23?

With the right connections, it's entirely believable.

Liza Minnelli wasn't an international stage star and singing sensation by age 23.

Day's character would have had to have had Hank in 1946, married in '45. So she had her career in the years before that. Not in the 1960s or q970s when there was TV to accelerate fame.

*1970s

I voted for "Rear Window," but the best Hitchcock film for me is "Saboteur."

For me, Stewart was the weakest link in REAR WINDOW. The women in this film, Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter were the best things about the film. I never cared for Jimmy’s acting and onscreen persona anyway so there’s that.

Uh, Liza won a Tony Award in 1965 for Flora the Red Menace when she was 19 years old. She won an Oscar for Cabaret when she was 21. She was certainly selling out concerts all over the world before she was 23 and I don't know that TV particularly had anything to do with that.

Barbra's career trajectory wasn't much different in terms of her accomplishments before she hit 23.

Now, granted Doris Day's character in The Man Who Knew Too Much seems more frau mommy than Broadway diva but nevertheless, what she supposedly did before retiring at 23 is entirely plausible, especially in the late 1940s. Think of Alice Faye as a sort of prototype.

R102 Alice Faye was a star of Broadway and the London Stage and the Paris stage before the age of 21? I didn't know that.

A reason I like "Rebecca" and "Shadow of a Doubt" the best are because they are the two films where the characters have the most depth.

Doris Day looked older than her age in The Man Who Knew Too Much. It isa very good movie from his middle period, and the earlier version is good as well.

My least favourite Hitchcock is actually Family Plot, mostly for the failed attempts of humour and underwhelming story. I haven’t seen The Paradine Case in a while, though. Torn Curtain and Topaz are redeemed for apa couple of scenes, which Family Plot does not have.

Another supposed clunker i like is Under Capricorn.

"For me, Stewart was the weakest link in REAR WINDOW."

Yeah, I like Stewart with a much younger co-star in "Vertigo", the relationship works because both parties are so desperately fucked-up it's believable, but in "Rear Window" you keep expecting Grace Kelly to take on of the million better men available to her.

Hitch should have cast Cary Grant in the role. He'd be believable as a man of action who was temporarily laid up, we'd definitely believe that Grace Kelly would be interested, Grant was intelligent enough to give the sense of a restless mind needing to think about, and his physical strength would add tension to the character's temporary disability. He would have been interesting in the role, and more convincing.

Cary or Gregory Peck r106.

Cary, R107!

"Rear Window" needed a slight light touch, and Stewart brought a smidgen of lightness to the role and Grant would have brought more, but Peck didn't do light touches. His wheelchair-bound photographer would have been unhappy, brooding, and nearly tragic, and he'd have made the film into the sort of dark drama I don't much like.

Clearly, for Hitch, Jimmy Stewart represented the All-American Everyman, an ordinary guy who finds himself in extraordinary situations. It's actually surprising that he didn't work with Stewart in the 1940s when Stewart would have been age-appropriate for so many of those kinds of characters. I wonder if Hitch ever considered him for Uncle Charlie in SHADOW OF A DOUBT? Now, that would have been interesting casting.

You're right, R109, Stewart would have been PERFECT for that role!!! Not just because he had real emotional depths as an actor and must have been looking for a chance to use them, not just because he worked well with Hitchcock, but because the audience would totally have been expecting something else when they saw him meander on to the screen! Hitch actually did exactly that with "Psycho", Tony Perkins had been known as a puppy-eyed male ingenue until then. And for his first hour in "Psycho", he seemed as sweet and puppy-eyed as usual...

But "Shadow of a Doubt" was made in 1943, and Stewart was a military pilot at the time. Well, dammit, Hitch should have held the project until Stewart was free, but in those days there was no knowing if any given actor would ever come back to Hollywood.

[quote]Uh, Liza won a Tony Award in 1965 for Flora the Red Menace when she was 19 years old. She won an Oscar for Cabaret when she was 21.

She was 27 when she won for "Cabaret" in 1973. But she looked 21!

R106, of course, any woman would have wanted Cary Grant. Casting Jimmy Stewart as the hero makes Grace Kelly's longing for him so sad--she should know better, but there she is, Miss Lonelyhearts, playing second fiddle to Stewart's voyeuristic obsessions. That's why it's such a great moment when she appears with Mrs. Thorwald's wedding ring. For whatever reason, she's willing to go through hell and high water to marry Stewart, even though he probably doesn't deserve her.

R110, I completely see your point about Stewart beng cast as Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. However, in the movie as we have there is very little doubt about Uncle Charlie beingguilty, it is heavily signalled, starting from the black smoke from the train when he arrives in town. Unlike Psycho, there is not really a surprise or even much doubt (the doubt is reserved to the young Charlie).

Did Jimmy Stewart ever play a murderer?

R114, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH? Best Picture of 1952.

R115, that was a circus movie? I remember watching it on TV, but I don't remember Jimmy Stewart being in the movie. Wasn't that a Charlton Heston movie?

I once saw an old movie about Glenn Miller and Jimmy Stewart played him with June Allyson as his wife. They were a good match. Both boring and annoying as hell. But I did love the music and the WW II nostalgia.

The original script for "It's a Wonderful Life" was titled "It's a Horrible Death" and had George killing half of Bedford Falls.

R114, in 1950, Stewart wanted to move away from his "aw, shucks" persona and made a number of rather dark, violent Westerns with director Anthony Mann. In those films, Stewart does more just kill people; he's often unrepentantly cynical and nasty. No one watches Westerns anymore, but at the time they remade Stewart's career. It wasn't a surprise to audiences that he could play troubled characters.

Shadow Of A Doubt should have been on the list. The acting is amazing across the board. So good!

"However, in the movie as we have there is very little doubt about Uncle Charlie beingguilty, it is heavily signalled, starting from the black smoke from the train when he arrives in town."

If gormless young Jimmy Stewart had played Uncle Charlie, all that deliberate cinematic foreshadowing would have only created a vague unease to 1943 cinemagoers, and the revelation of the killer's identity would have been a rather larger surprise. And that's the difference that casting makes. But well, Stewart was unavailable in the early 1940s.

As for Stewart's career, he started branching out from the aw-shucks comedies in the late 1940s with films like "it's a Wonderful Life" where he plays a suicidal character, and "Harvey" where he plays an unrepentant alcoholic. He really was an odd sort of actor, he always seemed to be the same guy with the same voice and the hands in his slouchy pockets, but he had a truly vast emotional range. He could do everything from villainy to batshittery to the fluffiest comedy.

Jimmy Stewart is incredible in MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, DESTRY, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and THE MORTAL STORM. I suspect a lot of posters here have never seen him in some of his best 30s and 40s films. I totally agree he became rather boring in the 50s and never really recovered. But that's what usually happens in an acting career that spans 5 decades.

It's interesting that the 1950s of Hollywood couldn't let go of lots of the leading men of the 30s and 40s who became too old for many of their roles and leading women, like Stewart, Bill Holden, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. But the public loved them. Bogart and Spencer Tracy matured more gracefully into character leads and Cary Grant simply didn't age.

I loved how Hitchcock told the story in Shadow of a Doubt. We knew who the killer was, but the family didn't. And watching that build up of suspense, as Theresa Wright becomes aware.

And the clue of The Merry Widow Waltz!

R121 Jimmy Stewart was a Top 10 box office star in the ‘50s. In 1955, I think, he was #1. Guess that’s why Hollywood couldn’t “let go” of him. And Stewart gave some of his greatest performances in the decade that he never could have given earlier.

R122 Teresa Wright’s performances is just breathtaking. Spot on in every nuance.

r124, I know all that but what I meant to express in my post is looking back at Stewart's 1950s films now, he seems too old for many of those leading man roles. Hollywood didn't care (the films made tons of money) and neither did the general public, but in retrospect.....meh, hard for me to understand the appeal.

I love his performances in the 1930s and 1940s, as I said.

R126 Okay, that’s your opinion and I respect that. He was way too old to play Lindbergh (though I still enjoyed the performance, on some level). Otherwise (to me, not to you) he was only in his 40s in most of those movies and then as now that was not considered too old to be a leading man. He’d been through some harrowing and exhausting war experiences and maybe he looked a little older, I don’t know, he looked pretty good to me. He started to look old to me around the time of Anatomy Of A Murder. By the way, just because Hitchcock used Jimmy’s age as an excuse as to why Vertigo wasn’t a big hit (when did Hitchcock ever admit he was wrong?) it doesn’t mean that’s the reason.

I also feel restoring movies to within an inch of their life has made every wrinkle on an actor’s face, every bit of glue where their hairpiece is fitted, *much* more obvious than it ever was (or was ever meant to be).

I don’t agree Jimmy Stewart at age 35 or 36 would have been a good Uncle Charlie in Shadow Of A Doubt (as the brother of Patricia Collinge). Besides I think Joseph Cotten was perfect in the role.

Jimmy Stewart’s performance across the board are compelling, lived-in but charismatic, and almost startlingly modern. He’s one of the few Hollywood legends of that time that truly deserves his icon status.

I think many or most of them deserve their icon status.

Not Stewart IMO.

If you’re a star for 50 or more years you deserved icon status.

I always thought it was weird that Jane - playing a Brit - doesn't attempt a British accent in Stage Fright, but then comes up with a perfectly acceptable Cockney when she goes "in disguise" as Doris.

I think the thing with the "false scene," ie the one that didn't happen - it's Richard Todd who is telling the story, so the scene is reflecting his version of what happened.

My problem with Jimmy Stewart, is that he was always Jimmy Stewart.

There’s nothing worse than when an American actor is playing a British character and they don’t use an accent.

Richard Todd needs to added to the Most Boring and Dull Leading Men of Hollywood!

Did no one mention The Wrong Man? That seems like the least Hitchcockian of all his movies.

I don't agree about The Wong Man in that it involves an innocent man accused of a crime he didn't commit, which is a theme Hitchcock occasionally used.

While it's his most straightforward film, it's well made.

The movie that seems the most atypical is the pirate movie Jamaica Inn, the last film he made in England before he came to America.

I watched Dial M for Murder last night. To night I am watching A Perfect Murder. I'm curious which one do people prefer. Because I think I like A Perfect Murder best. The original, M, sort of screws up the ending. It's too contrived.

R139 here. I do want to say how much I love the yellow Chinoiserie desk lamp in Grace Kelly's flat. LOVED it.

I didn't care for Dial M for Murder because the camera never leaves the apartment. I guess that's part of the appeal, but it comes off as a filmed stage show.

I loved Rear Window. Her wardrobe alone deserved an Oscar.

I voted for "The Birds" but I like the other Hitchcock movie Tippi Hedren starred in, "Marnie", even more. I know it's an odd choice (especially considering Mark's perverted obsession with possessing and taming her, not to mention the rape scene!), but the music and the performances by Hedren as Marnie and Louise Latham as Marnie's mother fascinate me.

Many are equally "best" to me because each is distinctively entertaining. In no particular order:

Strangers on a Train

Stage Fright

The Lodger

The 39 Steps

The Ring

Young and Innocent

Foreign Correspondent

And I'll be the only one to list it, but: The Farmer's Wife

Some random article about Hitchcock gay themes. Any others than what’s on this list?

North By Northwest

Strangers on a Train

Rope

Psycho

Rebecca

The Lady Vanishes

R145, "Isobel Sedbusk," the mystery writer, and her female companion in Suspicion.

Imagine if David Fincher directed A Perfect Murder. He was great at directing Michael Douglas (The Game) and he would have brought some dreariness to the look (see NYC in SE7EN). It’d be a truly creepy movie.

I can't help but notice none of you bitches has selected MR. AND MRS. SMITH.

Have any of you even seen it?

There is a lesbian couple in SUSPICION.

Yes, I've seen it 148, and if there was a "Worst Hitchcock Film" thread, I'd be yammering long and loud!

The plot is idiotic and petty, the dialogue dances around the main conflict because it involves sex, and I don't remember laughing once. Not even top actors and a top director could save that mess, and at least the studio learned not to shove Hitchcock into material that didn't suit him.

I loved the Psycho remake because filming in color made the shower scene much more visceral.

Seeing the knife cutting flesh was scarier in color.

I think with both Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, the limits of the setting very deliberate. In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart was immobilized by his broken leg & cast. So we felt that confinement and how helpless he was. And with Dial M it was claustrophobic on purpose. But I also agree, it felt like it was mounted the way a play.

Shadow of a Doubt has the best performances across the board of any Hitchcock film. Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright give career-best performances; Patricia Collinge is unforgettable as the sweet, gabby, out-of-it mother; and there are superb small performances by Edna May Wonacott as the precocious child, Hume Cronyn as the neighboring crime fiction buff, and Janet Shaw as Charlie's bitter high school classmate working at the diner.

You can't talk about claustrophobic stage bound Hitchcock films without mentioning Rope.

Another miscast James Stewart IMHO.

The thing that "Old Acquaintance" really has going for it is that it's so funny in places (most memorably when Bette Davis shakes Miriam Hopkins, but also in the hilarious montage when they show all of Hopkins's slurpy bestselling potboilers rolling out).

There's almost zero humor in "The Turning Point"--it takes itself too seriously.

I like the one where the birds peck the lady to death while she’s taking a shower.

Sorry--wrong thread!

I would have mentioned Rope if I had thought of it, but I don't think I've ever seen it.

That claustrophobia is a thing with him. In The Birds first, the kids are trapped in the school, then Tippi and Mitch and his mother and kid sister are trapped in the living room with the birds trying to get in and they come thru the chimney which, I coulda told him they'd do that.

And Tippi was trapped in the phonebooth.

[quote]Seeing the knife cutting flesh was scarier in color.

You never see the knife cutting flesh in Hitchcock's version.

R161 If you pause the shower scene for a split second you can see a fake torso getting pierced slightly by the knife. Hitchcock later claimed the torso hadn’t been used in the movie but the power of home video proved that wrong. You can also see the blurry outline of breasts as she’s grabbing on to the shower curtain.

R153 Agreed! The performances are all iconic in their own way. So, so good!

R159, it is also a blatant inversion, first the birds are kept and seen in cages, then the humans.

r148 MR AND MRS SMITH is sufficiently entertaining. It only seems "bad" if you watch it expecting a Hitchcock movie. It has some cute moments, some worthwhile male eye-candy, and even some gay vibes from Mr. Raymond.

R165 i just watched Mr and Mrs Smith for first time in decades on YouTube. I enjoyed it and agree that it’s just not typical AH fare. Yes, the Jeff character gives off some vibes especially in the first scene he has with David where he looks at him very longingly. Gene Raymond had gay rumors and a supposed abusive marriage in real life. It’s pretty explicit and accusatory in his Wiki.

Wasn’t Gene Raymond busted with a man while in uniform during WW2? I think I remember hearing about that.

Wait, here…

His wiki page must be written by one of his numerous frauen fans.

I just rewatched Vertigo. What a gorgeous film.

R169 I saw it in the theatre in Boston last night on a Technicolor print. Gorgeous

Psycho and Rear Window in a DEAD heat.

R141 If you see Dial M For Murder in 3D it seems like a whole different movie, almost.

I rewatched Shadow of a Doubt today. Very enjoyable and easy to see why it’s a DL favorite, with its talk of useless, fat women:

Uncle Charlie: The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking their money, eating their money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.

Young Charlie: But they're alive. They're human beings.

Uncle Charlie: Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?

Rebecca, Psycho or Strangers on a Train

r173, it's that scene of the waitress admiring the ring that clinches it for me. I also like the idea of evil Uncle Charlie nestled in the heart of that wholesome family.

For years I have been looking for the Vase that sat on the desk that was situated in front of the french doors that led out into the garden in Dial M for Murder. It is Chinoiserie. Yellow with blue. I LOVE it.

It's so strange to see Charlie bustling around 1943 Santa Rosa solving murders... because how does a grown adult have nothing else to do? Shouldn't someone from an ordinary middle-class family be getting a job, going to college, nailing down a husband, something?

Oldest of the eldergays, was this common at the time? I thought that in 1943, any young woman with anything on the ball was doing war work!

I absolutely love Rebecca and Rear Window. I thought Vertigo was strange and not in a good way. I don’t entirely understand the hype around that movie, although the costumes and cinematography are beautiful.

R177 What age is she supposed to be? Theresa Wright was cast younger than her actual age for most of the 1940s. Wasn’t she also just hanging around living at home in The Best Years Of Our Lives? I think Wright was 27-28 at the time, but playing a younger character.

You don’t have to go back to the 40s to find the unmarried daughter of the family living at home (and not always working) until she found a husband. In fact a lot of parents preferred that, because “women shouldn’t have to work”. And going out on her own meant she was more likely to get knocked up or something.

That was a philosophy that hung on at least into the 70s, in some cases. I knew families like that, in the 70s, where the girl graduated from high school and then lived at home, helping the mother (who also didn’t work). Different times.

R178, Wright was supposed to be a teenager in Shadow of a Doubt. And you make a great overall point: the whole idea that women should "go out and do something" was not popular. Look at what happened in the 'fifties: the women who had worked during the war effort had been fired; they were all now supposed to be June Cleaver.

R180 Thanks. It’s hard to explain the mindset, because it’s so looked down on today (for women not to be productive members of the work force). Partly it was also economics. A household could be supported on one income and there was no disgrace and nothing unusual in a wife or daughter not working (in the movie, the father is a bank clerk, I think. That’s not a job an middle-aged man would be supporting a family on today).

Many people today grew up in an era where Mom and Dad, and even the kids, worked a lot. (Even in the 70s, kids worked less than they do today, according to what I’ve read.)

My mother was born in the thirties and she pretty much lived at home with her parents until she got married at 24 (she was preggers with my brother). While she worked as a hairdresser, my grandparents were reluctant to let her live alone. She lived with a fellow hairdresser for two months until the woman made a pass towards my mother. She told them and they were there in twenty minutes, with suitcases.

A friend of mine’s mom (we’re both 65) never worked a day in her life. Lived with her folks until she got married, in her mid-20s, then was a housewife after that. Then a “retiree” with her husband in another state. Not just men frowned on women working. Another friend of mine said his mom (who didn’t work, either) looked down on women who worked.

This is not the tangent I expected this thread to head down

R184 Well, about 7 replies back someone asked a question and a few people were interested in talking about it.

I just watched Shadow of a Doubt based on the recommendations here, and it did not disappoint. Other than some of the scenery and the black-and-white and some of the accents, the movie had a vibe that seem very modern. It was ahead of its time.

I actually never really loved Shadow Of A Doubt.

It seemed odd that Santa Rosa was presented as a small town, when at the time it was at least a medium-sized city of about 20K people. (And today it’s 100K). Why not choose a real small town? This supposedly little town had a big downtown onscreen, and big churches, and so forth. But the family was so old-fashioned and almost rural.

It never built up any suspense for me.

Rebecca, likewise, while high-quality in the Selznick manner, also never got up a head of steam. It’s a lush-looking movie that’s a little too long, and is moderately involving. Also there is music playing under nearly every scene in the film. Some of it is not even by Franz Waxman (the credited composer) and comes from Max Steiner’s score for A Star Is Born - also a Selznick film, from 1937). Once you notice it, it’s really a bit annoying.

I think the best Hitchcock film is Vertigo, the most gripping and involving (and enjoyable, but also gross) is Rear Window, the most sheer entertainment is North By Northwest, the most fascinating is Psycho. the most purely Hitchcockian Hollywood film is Notorious, the most purely Hitchcockian British film is either The 39 Steps of The Lady Vanishes. The best acted is possibly The Wrong Man. Second Best: I Confess. The most experimental triumph is Rope.

REBECCA, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, LIFEBOAT, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, THE BIRDS.

I was always taught that cocks come in all different shapes and sizes. I require 7” or more of white, cut meat.

[quote] Well, about 7 replies back someone asked a question and a few people were interested in talking about it.

Yes dear, I understand how tangents happen

I love Rope and The Birds.

#1 = "Dial 'M' For Murder." Even more than in "Rope," Hitchcock uses the main setting of the Confined Room to brilliant effect. The dialogue is crisp, not a word wasted or unnecessary. And the cleverness of the ending, with one of cinema's greatest "investigator" actors, John Williams.

#2 = "Strangers On a Train." Brilliant concept. Intriguing male antagonists, and a side of "gay panic." Terrific juxtaposition of actions, starting with the opening scenes of each man alighting from a vehicle, seen first only as shod feet [Note: Baz Luhrmann, in "Elvis," TWICE showed Elvis exiting his truck feet first, in the same style B&W shoes as Bruno. Homage paid.] The twin appearances of the murdered wife and the girlfriend's younger sister, with Bruno momentarily losing it. The inherent madness of a carnival. Etc.

#3. "Witness For The Prosecution." Still the absolute best adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. What can one say? A brilliant cast. More than a couple twists and even shocks. Clever dialogue, notably at the end (it's right up there with "Nobody's perfect!").

SPOILER:

Billy Wilder directed WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, not Hitchcock.

North by Northwest.

May I add, the scenes where they got him drunk and made Cary drive at night on a winding road, Mount Rushmore and pesticide spraying from a plane over the field he was in. Good stuff.

I love that Rope and Rear Window never commit to melodrama like some of his films. I actually also find Psycho subtly brutal. I love Rebecca and Vertigo but some of the falling action is a bit contrived over the top in a small way.

Oops!! I stand thoroughly corrected, r193! No wonder the ending reminded me of "Some Like It Hot"!

R114, Jimmy Stewart played a crazed murderer in one of his earliest movies, After The Thin Man (1936) starring William Powell and Myrna Loy). Stewart played the nice young male suitor of the female murder suspect so it was a huge surprise when he was revealed as the killer at the end.