Who Went Home on, We Can't End Droughtlander, But We Can Get You Ready for. The most insightful comments on all subjects will be published daily in dedicated articles. But what have we missed? Bernard Herrmann’s razor-sharp string arrangements, Anthony Perkins’ genuinely creepy turn as the shy, charming killer Norman Bates, and Janet Leigh’s grisly murder in the shower are all very familiar. Following the commercial failure of the downbeat Vertigo, Hitchcock made his most pleasurable crowd-pleaser. The best Alfred Hitchcock movies of all time. The first half hour is a little slow to get moving, but once that's ticked past you're into a ruthlessly effective inversion of the whodunnit mystery, which gives Grace Kelly a lot to get stuck into as Margot. This is Hitchcock’s deepest and most personal work, an endlessly complex statement on masculinity and obsession, that will forever be a staple of film school curriculums. Edgar Wright wished many happy returns to a film he called "one of those rare, magical occurrences where genre film & high art collide. An email has been sent to you. Alfred Hitchcock began working during the silent film era and transitioned to sound for his tenth film, Blackmail. Typical Hitchcock flourishes, like adventurous thrills and humor, are missing. It looks as though you’ve already said that. Tony then schemes to incriminate Margot for the crime but has to contend with Inspector Hubbard. Only a young woman admits to having seen her and she enlists a young Englishman to help her find said lady, who it later transpires is a British spy. “Sooner or later,” Roger Ebert once wrote, “every Hitchcock woman was humiliated.” The Birds is perhaps the most extreme example. An unnecessarily prolonged epilogue with too much expository dialogue has always stuck out like a sore thumb, but that’s not enough to detract from Psycho‘s permanent standing as an indispensable cultural landmark. The result is one of the greatest British films of all time and Hitchcock’s first true classic, with a dream pairing in dashing Robert Donat and icily beautiful Madeleine Carroll. And all this happens in a mere 86 minutes. Made for a mere $800,000 – less than a quarter of the cost of its immediate predecessor North By Northwest – Psycho grossed upwards of $30 million over its extended run, and provided Universal with a property it has continued to milk to this day. Notorious is also noteworthy for a fascinating portent of things to come, with one of Hitchcock’s earliest domineering mothers. It’s a witty, sprightly, romantic, morbid, paranoid blend of all Hitchcock’s strongest suits, and a sly reminder that you, the cinema audience, are as much a peeping Tom as Jeff. There’s one of his great shots, a slow zoom down from a balcony into a party, down and down and down, finally focusing in on Bergman’s hand frantically squeezing a key. It endures, though, because of its careful shuffling of that strain of sadism and the restrained, haunted editing which separates the great orgies of horror that come when the birds attack. While Hitchcock didn’t direct this documentary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen in 1945 – his month-long involvement as 'treatment advisor' only started after all the reels had been filmed – it’s his advice to avoid editing in favour of long, slow pans and unbroken shots which gives the film its air of solemn, truthful witness. Just as she becomes consumed by inferiority complex, a sudden crisis changes the dynamics between the characters. This is Grace Kelly‘s most iconic role, and her transformation from a glamorous, passive, indoor girl to a risk-taking adventuress touches us more every time we see the film. Add it so that others may vote for it. More than 80 years later (! Instead, he shot both a sound and a silent version, with the latter actually holding up best. Audiences in 1958 weren’t ready to embrace lovable good-guy Jimmy Stewart playing against type as a deeply troubled individual in the throes of despair, but he is brilliant here. 10 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, had a career that spanned 50-plus films. he Oscars don’t always get it right. Despite this, Rebecca is unmistakably a Hitchcock picture, a typically deft psychological thriller showing he was the right choice to bring Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic melodrama to the screen. Studying Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock, whose six-decade career is one of the most influential in the history of filmmaking. The 1940 film ‘Rebecca’ marked his first American project. Aysgarth’s broke, borrowing money from all over the place, and had designs on Lina’s rich dad’s money. Strangers on a Train uses all of that, and ladles on the idea of doubles and mirrors as well as adding a sexual ambiguity to Bruno and Guy’s relationship. She’s sentenced to hang. The 39 Steps is the best of the lot, taking John Buchan’s source adventure novel and turning it into a cross-country caper, as Richard Hannay (a superbly suave Robert Donat) stumbles into a mystery involving assassins, military secrets, and a music hall performer with a photographic memory. There’s the newlyweds, a struggling songwriter, a lonely woman desperate for love… and a wife who suddenly disappears. He also had many on-screen appearances in his and other director’s film, and is right up there with stars like Orson Welles and John Huston in terms of fame and success. Audiences played along, delighting in the experience (it’s a lot of fun to scream in a movie theater), and it became the most profitable black-and-white sound film ever made. There was an error in your submission. Please note that these are the best, not just the scariest Hitchcock movies. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. Please try again. Hitchcock returned to film in Britain for the first time in 22 years for this late success. As he sets out to prove his innocence and find the real Kaplan, he is helped by Eve Kendall, who is not what she appears to be. "At the end of the war," Hitchcock told Henri Langlois in the Seventies, "I made a film to show the reality of the concentration camps, you know. 5. At its root, it’s about an ordinary man desperately trying to make decisions while the walls close in. And it paid off. How I envy anyone viewing this rollercoaster tongue-in-cheek comedy-thriller for the first time, with its implausible but glorious set pieces and marvellous performances from Cary Grant as the bewildered advertising executive mistaken for someone who didn’t even exist in the first place, and James Mason as the impossibly urbane villain. James Stewart is the photographer confined to his apartment with a broken leg who spends his time spying on his neighbours. Active from the silent era up until his death in 1980, Hitchcock has appeared in plenty of blockbusters and critically-acclaimed movies, earning awards and accolades along the way. Cary Grant always did incredible work with Hitchcock, and this might be the performance of his career. – Of 'Tenet' Explained, This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. A full 60 years later, Psycho is still shocking, nerve-frying even.