Suspense – Alfred Hitchcock
I’m faking a lot of thinking here with this category. Alfred Hitchcock usually can be considered as a creator of crime or specifically murder stories. But sometimes it’s a spy story or something really crazy like birds turning against humanity. So, suspense is probably as good a label as anything else.
For most of his career Hitchcock produced very high-quality product. At his peak he could get the best actors and lavish budgets to make his films. But even on a shoestring like with Psycho he could produce a memorable movie. At the very end he did produce some awful stuff. I assume he was beginning to fail due to old age.
I’ve reviewed most of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them. But here’s a list of what I liked in Hitchcock’s output. I still haven’t seen all his films but there are enough to form more than a good list of his best stuff.
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
- The 39 Steps (1935)
- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
- Suspicion (1941)
- Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
- Lifeboat (1944)
- Spellbound (1945)
- Notorious (1946)
- Rope (1948)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- Dial M for Murder (1953)
- Rear Window (1954)
- To Catch a Thief (1955)
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
- North by Northwest (1959)
- Psycho (1960)
- The Birds (1963)
If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your Hitchcockian opinions known in the comments below. People are usually very decided in their feelings about his films, one way or the other. For instance, film aficionados consider “Vertigo” Hitchcock’s greatest masterpiece and a seminal work of cinematic importance. But being a philistine, I despise it. So, I left it out.