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Alfred Hitchcock (1 Viewer)

Alfred

  • Rope

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • Rebecca

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Notorious

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Vertigo

    Votes: 15 13.8%
  • North By Northwest

    Votes: 25 22.9%
  • Psycho

    Votes: 19 17.4%
  • Rear Window

    Votes: 31 28.4%
  • The 39 Steps

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • To Catch A Thief

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Birds

    Votes: 9 8.3%
  • Shadow Of A Doubt

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Wrong Man

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Dial M For Murder

    Votes: 5 4.6%
  • Strangers On A Train

    Votes: 2 1.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    109
Wow. I voted The Birds because that movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I doubt anyone else would consider it his "best", though.

 
Loves me some Rebecca & Suspicion (or any film where Cary Grant calls his beloved "Monkeyface"), but NxNW is behind only Chinatown as the most immaculate movie ever made.

 
Film buffs in some online poll recently voted Vertigo as the best film of the all time in the Top 100 list (Citizen Kane usually had always had the honors before that). Among Hitchcock fans, for years Rear Window was the favorite. And hard not to pick Psycho since it was such a ground breaking film for its time.

That said I voted for North By Northwest, where he finally made the perfect film of the man wrongly accused of something and chased by the authorities and the bad guys. He tried it originally with the 39 Steps, then again with Saboteur and finally got it right in North By Northwest. Cary Grant is perfectly cast and underplays his part well (i.e. crop dusting scene). James Mason plays a deliciously evil sociopath and Eva Marie Saint, though no Grace Kelly (who would have been cast if she had not retired) surprisingly pulls off the part of the blond ingenue.

 
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A few years back I watched Dial M for Murder for the first time. After watching the first 5-10 minutes I thought it would not be any good..yet 2 hours later I was still watching. It sucked me in. :thumbup:

 
There has not been much attention to "Rope".The protagonists of the film were the "hipsters" of their day--young people with an exaggerated sense of their self-worth.

 
Film buffs in some online poll recently voted Vertigo as the best film of the all time in the Top 100 list (Citizen Kane usually had always had the honors before that). Among Hitchcock fans, for years Rear Window was the favorite. And hard not to pick Psycho since it was such a ground breaking film for its time.

That said I voted for North By Northwest, where he finally made the perfect film of the man wrongly accused of something and chased by the authorities and the bad guys. He tried it originally with the 39 Steps, then again with Saboteur and finally got it right in North By Northwest. Cary Grant is perfectly cast and underplays his part well (i.e. crop dusting scene). James Mason plays a deliciously evil sociopath and Eva Marie Saint, though no Grace Kelly (who would have been cast if she had not retired) surprisingly pulls off the part of the blond ingenue.
It's so bizarre to me that Vertigo ranks above Rear Window. Not even in the same ballpark IMO.Huge fan of North By Northwest. Suspenseful but also playful. Still like Rear Window better, but not by much.

Per EB's question re: Stewart or Grant.....easy call. Cary Grant had an on-screen presence that Stewart could never match.

 
Film buffs in some online poll recently voted Vertigo as the best film of the all time in the Top 100 list (Citizen Kane usually had always had the honors before that). Among Hitchcock fans, for years Rear Window was the favorite. And hard not to pick Psycho since it was such a ground breaking film for its time.

That said I voted for North By Northwest, where he finally made the perfect film of the man wrongly accused of something and chased by the authorities and the bad guys. He tried it originally with the 39 Steps, then again with Saboteur and finally got it right in North By Northwest. Cary Grant is perfectly cast and underplays his part well (i.e. crop dusting scene). James Mason plays a deliciously evil sociopath and Eva Marie Saint, though no Grace Kelly (who would have been cast if she had not retired) surprisingly pulls off the part of the blond ingenue.
It's so bizarre to me that Vertigo ranks above Rear Window. Not even in the same ballpark IMO.Huge fan of North By Northwest. Suspenseful but also playful. Still like Rear Window better, but not by much.

Per EB's question re: Stewart or Grant.....easy call. Cary Grant had an on-screen presence that Stewart could never match.
It struck me as rather odd too, although discussing the two is an apples and oranges comparison. I found the link on this and it was a poll of film critics (which perhaps explains it):http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/vertigo-citizen-kane-greatest-film-of-all-time-357266

 
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Voted Psycho.It has the biggest WTF in movie history."Norman Bates mother has been dead and buried for 10 years.." :jawdrop:

 
North By Northwest just over the criminally underrated Notorious.North By Northwest created the modern the modern action movie genre

 
Film buffs in some online poll recently voted Vertigo as the best film of the all time in the Top 100 list (Citizen Kane usually had always had the honors before that). Among Hitchcock fans, for years Rear Window was the favorite. And hard not to pick Psycho since it was such a ground breaking film for its time.

That said I voted for North By Northwest, where he finally made the perfect film of the man wrongly accused of something and chased by the authorities and the bad guys. He tried it originally with the 39 Steps, then again with Saboteur and finally got it right in North By Northwest. Cary Grant is perfectly cast and underplays his part well (i.e. crop dusting scene). James Mason plays a deliciously evil sociopath and Eva Marie Saint, though no Grace Kelly (who would have been cast if she had not retired) surprisingly pulls off the part of the blond ingenue.
It's so bizarre to me that Vertigo ranks above Rear Window. Not even in the same ballpark IMO.Huge fan of North By Northwest. Suspenseful but also playful. Still like Rear Window better, but not by much.

Per EB's question re: Stewart or Grant.....easy call. Cary Grant had an on-screen presence that Stewart could never match.
For a bit of North By Northwest casting trivia re Stewart and Grant:
James Stewart was very interested in starring in this movie, begging Alfred Hitchcock to let him play Thornhill. Hitchcock claimed that Vertigo's lack of financial success was because Stewart "looked too old". MGM wanted Gregory Peck, but Hitchcock instead cast Cary Grant, who, ironically, was actually 4 years Stewart's senior.

While filming Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and "Vertigo" star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder before "officially" offering him the North by Northwest role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/trivia

 
Loves me some Rebecca & Suspicion (or any film where Cary Grant calls his beloved "Monkeyface"), but NxNW is behind only Chinatown as the most immaculate movie ever made.
Chinatown is utterly immaculate. Greatest/most memorable movie I've ever seen.

eta* Went Vertigo. Kim Novak and Madge.

 
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Loves me some Rebecca & Suspicion (or any film where Cary Grant calls his beloved "Monkeyface"), but NxNW is behind only Chinatown as the most immaculate movie ever made.
Chinatown is utterly immaculate. Greatest/most memorable movie I've ever seen.

eta* Went Vertigo. Kim Novak and Madge.
Ahhhh....Novak.....maybe Hollywood's most indecipherable siren. Is she a pounce pillow, a vixen, a freak?

I've spent the last 5 yrs (almost finished) writing a musical that brings Carroll's Alice into the 21st C. The followup - if there is one - will be a musicalization of Bell, Book & Candle (Stewart & Novak again). IF, that is, i'm able to conclude that a normal woman can play Gillian.

 
Loves me some Rebecca & Suspicion (or any film where Cary Grant calls his beloved "Monkeyface"), but NxNW is behind only Chinatown as the most immaculate movie ever made.
Chinatown is utterly immaculate. Greatest/most memorable movie I've ever seen.

eta* Went Vertigo. Kim Novak and Madge.
Ahhhh....Novak.....maybe Hollywood's most indecipherable siren. Is she a pounce pillow, a vixen, a freak?

I've spent the last 5 yrs (almost finished) writing a musical that brings Carroll's Alice into the 21st C. The followup - if there is one - will be a musicalization of Bell, Book & Candle (Stewart & Novak again). IF, that is, i'm able to conclude that a normal woman can play Gillian.
Italiziced is Jabberwock talk, eh?

I'm going pounce pillow for Novak.

I'm going to have to see Bell, Book, and Candle somehow.

 
Loves me some Rebecca & Suspicion (or any film where Cary Grant calls his beloved "Monkeyface"), but NxNW is behind only Chinatown as the most immaculate movie ever made.
Chinatown is utterly immaculate. Greatest/most memorable movie I've ever seen.

eta* Went Vertigo. Kim Novak and Madge.
Ahhhh....Novak.....maybe Hollywood's most indecipherable siren. Is she a pounce pillow, a vixen, a freak?

I've spent the last 5 yrs (almost finished) writing a musical that brings Carroll's Alice into the 21st C. The followup - if there is one - will be a musicalization of Bell, Book & Candle (Stewart & Novak again). IF, that is, i'm able to conclude that a normal woman can play Gillian.
Italiziced is Jabberwock talk, eh?

I'm going pounce pillow for Novak.

I'm going to have to see Bell, Book, and Candle somehow.
I may be mimsey in the borogove, but that's what i quit FFApping to finish.

 
I still love psycho, watched it again the other night, great stuff.

I also love the old British stuff like Saboteur, 39 Steps, Secret Agent, etc.

The guy is all about plot structure with him always enjoy his movies.

 
North by northwest. Sooooo good. But there are 6 right answers here at least. Strangers on a train is my number two. One if the greatest openings ever.

 
Anybody have any idea what The Birds is really about? I'm sure the whole thing is a big metaphor about the Cold War or women or fear or all of the above.

Also funny how the main character has big time issues with his controlling mother limiting him just like Psycho.

 
Anybody have any idea what The Birds is really about? I'm sure the whole thing is a big metaphor about the Cold War or women or fear or all of the above.

Also funny how the main character has big time issues with his controlling mother limiting him just like Psycho.
Hitchcock avoided providing any explanation for the avian attacks on Bodega Bay during his lifetime. The actual meaning of the film was discussed at the TCM site:

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/105062|0/Spotlight-on-The-Birds.html

Certainly the idea of nature run amok is central to the narrative but so are other themes, particularly Melanie's own search for a mother figure (having been abandoned by her own years before) and a general fear of loneliness and entrapment. Over the years film scholars and critics have come to read other meanings into the movie; some see it as a metaphorical Western with the birds replacing Indians as the demonized 'other.' And some see the film as an allegory about sexual repression. Even today, The Birds continues to fascinate with its ambiguous ending in which the bird attacks are never explained.

In early drafts of the screenplay by Evan Hunter - a first time collaborator with Hitchcock whose novel The Blackboard Jungle became a hit movie in 1955 - there was a concerted effort to provide an explanation for the bird attacks even though they remained a mystery in the original Du Maurier novella. Yet none of the script changes - Melanie's suggestion of a species war against humans or political parallels to the world outside (the use of radio broadcasts from President Kennedy) - pleased Hitchcock and he continued to fuss over the screenplay (with creative input from actor Hume Cronyn - whose wife Jessica Tandy was cast in the film - and fiction writer V. F. Pritchett) after Hunter left to work on his next script, Marnie. Eventually, Hitchcock opted to remain ambiguous, eliminating a final bird attack on Mitch's departing car in favor of an announcer stating on the car radio, "It appears that the bird attacks come in waves with long intervals between. The reason for this does not seem clear yet."
 
Notorious should be mentioned in the same breath as Psycho and Rear Window.

But my oh my is Grace Kelly breathtaking in To Catch a Thief. :wub:

 
Big fan of Hitchcock films and his television work, Rear Window is my favorite and by a wide margin. So good, layered, a lot of items only noticed after repeated viewings, great performances, and the classic Hitchcock edge of your seat viewing.

Other Hitchcock topic worth discussing: What was his best cameo?

In Rear Window he is seen through the alleyway walking down the street.

 
Notorious should be mentioned in the same breath as Psycho and Rear Window.

But my oh my is Grace Kelly breathtaking in To Catch a Thief. :wub:
It's like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty by the Coen brothers. A film that would otherwise be considered mere fluff from a serious director gets serious when it comes to costumes and stunning feminine beauty. Grace and Jones make those movies memorable and verify that there are good ways in which Hollywood operates.

 
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Notorious should be mentioned in the same breath as Psycho and Rear Window.

But my oh my is Grace Kelly breathtaking in To Catch a Thief. :wub:
It's like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty by the Coen brothers. A film that would otherwise be considered mere fluff from a serious director gets serious when it comes to costumes and stunning feminine beauty. Grace and Jones make those movies memorable and verify that there are good ways in which Hollywood operates.
It has been reported that Hitchcock bought the rights to the David Dodge novel "To Catch a Thief" with Grace Kelly in mind. I dunno know about that, but here is some background info on the history/production of the film for those that are interested...

http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/To_Catch_a_Thief_(1955)

 
Grace looks damn fine in Dial M too. I kept wondering why Ray Milan was trying to kill this hot, sophisticated, fun super-rich babe of a wife who liked to hang around in lingerie. Idiot.

 
Notorious should be mentioned in the same breath as Psycho and Rear Window.

But my oh my is Grace Kelly breathtaking in To Catch a Thief. :wub:
It's like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Intolerable Cruelty by the Coen brothers. A film that would otherwise be considered mere fluff from a serious director gets serious when it comes to costumes and stunning feminine beauty. Grace and Jones make those movies memorable and verify that there are good ways in which Hollywood operates.
It has been reported that Hitchcock bought the rights to the David Dodge novel "To Catch a Thief" with Grace Kelly in mind. I dunno know about that, but here is some background info on the history/production of the film for those that are interested...

http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/To_Catch_a_Thief_(1955)
Interesting read. Edith Head (who is so famous as a costume designer that she was lionized in a They Might Be Giants song, and as a fictional costume designer for the Incredibles' re-design in the Pixar movie) and Mary Zophres, who was nominated for an Academy Award for True Grit, were the costume designers for To Catch A Thief and Intolerable Cruelty, respectively.

 
Big fan of Hitchcock films and his television work, Rear Window is my favorite and by a wide margin. So good, layered, a lot of items only noticed after repeated viewings, great performances, and the classic Hitchcock edge of your seat viewing.

Other Hitchcock topic worth discussing: What was his best cameo?

In Rear Window he is seen through the alleyway walking down the street.
I think the one in To Catch a Thief is funny.

Shadow of a Doubt and the 39 Steps being shut out? That's too bad. Great movies.
:thumbup:

 
Something nearly all Hitch movies have are characters who are cold liars. Even Tippi Hedrin in The Birds coolly lies, even though there is no murder or nefarious behavior going on.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Wow. I voted The Birds because that movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I doubt anyone else would consider it his "best", though.
It's better than often credited though.
It really is. The scene with the bird attack on the center of town with Hendren in the phone booth is about as good as Hitch did, not up to the crop dusting sequence in NBN, but stands on its own. Could only find a black-and-white clip of it on YouTube for some reason, you need to see the color version for full impact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MebHok963w4

 
There has not been much attention to "Rope".The protagonists of the film were the "hipsters" of their day--young people with an exaggerated sense of their self-worth.
I voted NBNW because it was the first Hitchcock flick I saw and I loved it. But Rope is a close second for me, and it amazes me how few people have actually seen it. It's brilliant.
 
Andy Dufresne said:
Big fan of Hitchcock films and his television work, Rear Window is my favorite and by a wide margin. So good, layered, a lot of items only noticed after repeated viewings, great performances, and the classic Hitchcock edge of your seat viewing.Other Hitchcock topic worth discussing: What was his best cameo?

In Rear Window he is seen through the alleyway walking down the street.
I think the one in To Catch a Thief is funny.
I laughed, but seems he could have done a bit better than that. Read he started putting his cameos earlier in the films as time went on. Apparently he felt viewers were being distracted looking for it.
 
I didn't vote, because it's too hard to pick just one.

NxNW and Rear Window are among my favorites.

Strangers on a Train is under rated; The Birds is over rated.

 
Voted Psycho but there are a lot of credible options for the #1 spot - Rear Window, NxNW, Strangers, and Vertigo are all acceptable choices. Need to watch Rope and Dial M for Murder (Dial M was on TCM on Sunday but I missed it).

 

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