Alfred Hitchcock began his career making silent films in Britain. There, he met and eventually married the woman who would become his greatest supporter, creative partner, and critic, Alma “Lady Hitchcock” Reville. Hollywood eventually came calling, but even with success both commercially and critically, few in Tinseltown knew what to do with him.
Today, Alfred Hitchcock is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Yet he doesn’t even have an Oscar for his main cinematic contribution, directing. If it’s any consolation, he did win the 1968 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. Instead, all Hitchcock owns is a legacy so far superior to his filmmaking peers that to consider him anything less than the undisputed maestro of the thriller is absurd. Among the old-school set of film critics, Hitchcock is king.
In a few weeks of this article’s publication, director Sacha Gervasi (responsible for the terrific documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil) will release his take on Psycho-period Hitchcock, complete with Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins as the portly Master of Suspense and Academy Queen Helen Mirren as his faithful (?) wife Elma. As with the recent HBO effort The Girl (which centered on the filmmaker’s rumored unhealthy fixation with Tippi Hedren during The Birds), behind-the-scenes scenes biopics offer little about the moviemaking process and, instead, focus more on the personal politics involved in Hitchcock’s artistic auteurship.
For fans of Alfred Hitchcock, no amount of TMZ tabloid-ing can destroy what is a truly remarkable filmmaker. Over four decades, he delivered a myriad of memorable titles. These ten films are his very, very best.
10. Saboteur (1942)
Alfred Hitchcock was the master of the mainstream thriller, and war and espionage were excellent subjects for him. In Saboteur, he makes the mostly comedic actor Bob Cummings into the story’s believable hero, Barry Kane. Saboteur centers around a factory worker who is accused of setting a fire that killed his friend. He blames a mysterious man named “Fry.”
The rest of the film is spent trying to find the truth, with a final confrontation taking place at—and on—the Statue of Liberty. While it was mocked by everyone he pitched it to, Saboteur eventually went on to be a major hit.
9. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Believe it or not, The Man Who Knew Too Much was a remake, with Alfred Hitchcock revisiting a project he first made in the early ’30s. With one more picture owed to Paramount, the studio thought this action adventure would benefit from an update. The director agreed.
Bringing along favorite leading man Jimmy Stewart and pop chanteuse Doris Day, The Man Who Knew Too Much‘s international assassination plotline appealed to post-war audiences. So did Day’s theme song, “Que Sera, Sera.” The film went on to win an Academy Award, and the song became the popular singer’s most famous.
8. The Birds (1963)
With Tippi Hedren’s horror story about Alfred Hitchcock respectfully acknowledged, The Birds remains his last great shocker (sorry, fans of Frenzy). The film is frightfully simple: our aviary friends turn into murderous fiends. However, its execution is so complex that scholars still dissect its many secrets, both in production and underlying themes. Via a combination of puppeteering, live animals, process shots, stock footage, and the standard Hitchcock flair, the director did for our fine feathered friends what he did for showers a few years before.
Today, The Birds has many detractors, including those complaining about the filmmaker’s onset cruelty toward his leading lady. Yet, the final product is a minor masterwork.
7: Notorious (1946)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious has superb casting: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains. Who could ask for a better espionage triangle?
The story centers on the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy and the US government agent who tries to recruit her for the cause. Her job? Seduce another former member of the Third Reich and figure out what his post-war plans are. The ending centers around a key, a wine cellar, and some very special ‘vintages’. Long beloved for its acting components, the film also finds Hitchcock experimenting with his new found love of suspense expressionism, where suggestion and cinematic sleight of hand would, hopefully, lead to thrills and chills.
6: Rear Window (1954)
For many 1950s-era fans of Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window was an unknown quantity. As one of the few films he retained the copyright for, he removed it from distribution shortly after its release. Many would only hear about the so-called lost masterpiece from those lucky to see it during its initial run.
Once Universal took over the property in the mid-1980s, home video exposed everyone to what the rumors and innuendos were about. Rear Window is perhaps the ultimate expression of Hitchcock’s aesthetic: a simple idea (a bedridden man may or may not have witnessed a murder from his apartment window) expertly and experimentally told. Rear Window remains a top notch thriller.
5. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Few who have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt will forget this serial killer in a new suburbia masterpiece. Teresa Wright is a naÏve young woman who believes her beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) is the greatest guy in the world. Such halting hero worship is challenged when it looks like said relative is actually a slick serial killer known as the Merry Widow Murderer.
The rest of Shadow of a Doubt is a fantastic “Is he or isn’t he?” From the Oscar-worthy performances to the final confrontation on a moving train, Hitchcock draws us into this seemingly safe white picket fence world and shows us the ugly and the evil underneath.
4. Strangers on a Train (1951)
As he would throughout the late 1940s and early ’50s, Alfred Hitchcock experimented with style and approach. Even this story of crossed killings (one consensual, the other far from it) couldn’t escape his cinematic tinkering.
Thus, with Strangers on a Train, we get the unforgettable murder at the carnival, the lens from a fallen pair of glasses capturing the act in all its noxious cruelty. Even better is the finalé, which returns to the fair and finds our reluctant hero taking on the wicked villain while riding an out-of-control carousel.
From its homoerotic undercurrents to its splash and spectacle, Strangers on a Train remains one of Hitchcock’s most astonishing artistic statements.
3. Dial M for Murder (1954)
For many, Dial M for Murder is Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, and that’s saying a lot when you consider that the filmmaker has made more than one movie that could be called a masterpiece. This and the following two films could easily be switched around on this list, their effect as art and as genre benchmarks are beyond reproach.
Here, Hitchcock’s work is personal, very personal. While accused of putting his fetishes and perversions onscreen for all to see, Dial M for Murder‘s story of a detective trying to decipher a mysterious murder remains a hypnotic and romantic stunner. We can see the source’s psychological complexity in every frame, and the results are spellbinding.
2. Psycho (1960)
Still smarting from studio rejection of Vertigo and angered that North By Northwest was embraced instead, Alfred Hitchcock wanted to push the boundaries of his filmmaking acumen once again. So he settled on a story inspired by serial killer Ed Gein, gussied it up with a name cast, and then handled the entire project like an auteur’s version of a B-movie.
Studio executives might have hated Psycho, but it’s now cited as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Better still, its effect on the public psyche was almost immediate. Let’s just say that shower scenes in films have never been as popular since Hitchcock’s Psycho.
1. North by Northwest (1959)
While he may have dismissed it as the kind of movie he could do with one hand tied behind his back, North by Northwest remains Alfred Hitchcock’s ultimate statement. It’s the reason his resume reads “The Master of Suspense”. For the Mount Rushmore finalé alone, the director deserves a few dozen film school courses in his name.
With another stellar cast – Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, an incredibly Martin Landau – and a terrific mistaken identity plot, North by Northwest flies by on wings of well-honed cinematic craftsmanship. Not only has it stood the test of time, it belittles any attempt to match its forward-thinking brilliance.