The Films of Alfred Hitchcock

[Martini Girl]

Oh Hunter, you made my new year! Hitchcock is my favorite director. In case you didn't know, BBC America is playing Hitchcock all month long!

My favorite film of his will always be Vertigo. I once drove hours to San Francisco, just so I could see it on the big screen there. Totally worth it, but my butt was totally numb from all the sitting! My favorite scene is when Judy writes the letter to Scotty, and my favorite line is when Scotty says "Judy, it can't matter to you!" Jimmy Stewart and necrophilia! Great combo!

I also love North By Northwest, Rear Window and Notorious. Those are my top four. But I also like The Trouble with Harry (so subversive), To Catch a Thief , Suspicion, & Psycho.

I've seen them all on the big screen (thanks to American Cinematheque). I'm also excited to hear that Helen Mirren is scheduled to play Alma Hitchcock in an upcoming bio-pic. Cannot wait!

thanks for starting this thread!

[Smilla]

The Trouble with Harry (so subversive)

I LOVE The Trouble With Harry! I used to own it, but sadly it has gone a-missin' from my collection[/bitter].

[ratscabies]

Jan 1, 2010 23:16:39 GMT -4 Smilla said:

The Trouble with Harry (so subversive)

I LOVE The Trouble With Harry! I used to own it, but sadly it has gone a-missin' from my collection[/bitter].

If something happened to my copy of Harry, I wouldn't know what to do. I love that movie so much. If I lost it, I would be annoyed. VERY annoyed!

I will also always love Psycho, and Rope.

[huntergrayson]

I can't believe how many of these I've yet to see!

Martini - I was not happy that that the Egyptian decided to have a screening of Vertigo in 70 mm on the 27th, when it knew I would be home for Christmas. I really wanted to go. I've seen it at Hollywood Forever though for the Cinespia screenings and that was awesome.

True, slightly fucked up, story: when my family first came to California to look at colleges I applied to, I tried to find the beach in Carmel/Monterey where Scotty and Madeline kiss. It's where I want to get married.

I have all the out-of-print Criterions of Spellbound/Notorious/Rebecca but I still want to buy the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection DVD set because it has other films that I don't own but the set is notorious (heh) for having problems with the DVDs and I don't want to get a bad set! Apparently, the packaging of the set was so tightly wrapped that most of the sets have somewhat scratched/warped discs! I don't know if they ever corrected the problem.

I should really try to get the watch that Hitchcock's daughter gave me fixed. I took the incredible, infamous Dr Drew Casper's Hitchcock class at USC - and Patricia came in, spoke, did a Q&A and gave the entire class watches with the Alfred silhouette. I so wish I could find the notes from that class.

Has anyone seen The 39 Steps on Broadway? The adaptation is coming here soon and it sounds like a really interesting take.

Hmm, my DirectTV guide said that Chiller is showing "The Birds 2: Land's End" *right now* and I just *had* to tune in. Instead? Vertigo. And it's at the exact same place that I left watching the TCM showing yesterday. (Midge goes to the asylum) but, alas, there's ads, which totally ruins watching movies on TV for me.

I don't know why Hitch gets branded by some as a misgoynist. The women have all the power in his films, those icy Hitchcockian Blondes, all cool on the surface, but fire underneath. Wouldn't you love to see what he could do with January Jones, Tilda Swinton or Nicole Kidman?

[Yossarian]

Great thread!

My favourites are:

Shadow of a Doubt - so compelling. And Hitchcock's own favourite.

Notorious - of course

Rear Window - *sigh* everything about that film was perfect, esp. Kelly's gowns

Vertigo - the Days of Lives writers wish they could be that twisted. And just beautifully shot.

Frenzy - his return to Britain in his later years. Wonderful shots of the markets in the East End and such a repulsive villain.

Jamaica Inn - so dark, and such an interesting commentary on class in Britain. Great.

[Deleted]

I find that almost all of Hitchcock's movies are endlessly rewatchable. No matter how many times I've seen them, if they're on, I just get drawn in and can't change the channel. That said, Vertigo is hard for me to rewatch because I find the whole movie so unsettling. If I'm already feeling a little down, it's too much for me to subject myself to those characters and their oppressive romance.

I also have to stick up for Marnie, which is a totally ridiculous and even offensive movie that for some reason I find absolutely compelling.

[hal9000]

Hitchcock fan signing in! *cough*avatar*cough*

I love Shadow of a Doubt the best. I had the most disturbing crush on Joseph Cotten after watching this at age 14, given the character. And my age. Uncle Charlie is a fox, y'all. Next would be The Lady Vanishes. I have a never-ending obsession with train films, and still yearn to have Margaret Lockwood's short, 1930s, pin-curled hair!

I looove Marnie, and don't find it at all offensive! It is the perfect mix of trash and trauma, a Freudian hoot, up there with A Double Life with Bette Davis, Glenn Ford and the highly underrated WB stalwart Dane Clark, and The Seventh Veil with James Mason and Ann Todd. The

SPOILER: Click to show

honeymoon rape

scene is supposed to be ghastly, and in the (literary) Freudian sense effectively removes the fantasy Marnie created for herself. I wrote a paper on it, and Persona when I was at uni, I wish I could find it. I thought Diane Baker was sooo gorgeous. She had the greatest hair ever, tossing it about when flirting with Sean Connery - who incidentally, never looked better. Hitchcock cast him after watching Dr. No, saying that he would be the next Cary Grant. Considering the success of his career, that was a pretty prediction.

As for Hitch's misogyny, I always think he gets a bad rap because his female characters are imbued with an extraordinary sense of self-possession, and own their sexuality, regardless of how men see them.

One of my happiness moments is when I won custody of the Criterion Rebecca (all our mostly internet-acquired Criterion disks, in fact!) in the Great Breakup of 2009. My ex-boyfriend got the Fox Film Noirs and the PS3 (no more Guitar Hero) which I'm still smarting over. I love Joan Fontaine (gorgeous, like a finer featured Scarlett Johansson), and Suspicion as well. It has these screwball comedy elements to it, reminiscent of a Jean Arthur film like Talk of the Town in spite of the shit ending. I love that the lesbian writer characters, one of them a classic, eccentric English butch, are just there, not commented on or overplayed, but present.

But, I don't like Notorious. I'm not an Ingrid Bergman fan at the best of times, or men with Mommy issues.

[Martini Girl]

Hunter--

One of the women who works on my floor is a renown librarian. Her husband was an art director, who worked with Hitchcock. She's just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the industry. She knows everyone.

Last week she told me Hitch had a foot fetish, and in later years, would only hire actresses with small feet (size 5 or 6). So unless Tilda and Nicole worked with him early on, they would not have been cast. She said he was a strange, strange man, and I totally believe it.

I would have loved to have taken that USC class on Hitchcock!

[PearlySweetcake]

Another raving Hitchcock fan checking in!

And my obsession goes beyond his movies - I have nearly every one of his Dell paperback short-story collections; 120+ at last count, boxsets of his tv series, Bernard Herrmann cds, and I even owned a Psycho shower curtain, which I ended up taking down because it kept scaring my boyfriend.

Favorite Hitchcock movies:

Psycho
Rebecca
Spellbound
Notorious
Rear Window

Least favorite:

Marnie (by far)

[SweetOblivion]

A few months ago at WalMart, I found an Alfred Hitchcock dvd called "Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins". It's a four disc set of his early movies (including Sabotage and The 39 Steps), even some of the silent ones. It's got 20 of them, with the bonus feature of 55 Hitchcock movie trailers from his entire career.

Oh, did I also mention it was only $5?