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Top 15 Best Hitchcock Films

By Riley Webster · October 24, 2012

Alfred Hitchcock is one of only a small handful of film director's who can claim to be as famous, if not more so, than the actual films he made himself.  This year is seeing the release of two bio-pics about the rotund director; The Girl, featuring on HBO, and Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitch.  Couple this with the recent release of 15 of his films on Blu-Ray, and the fact that it's nearing Halloween, makes this a seemingly perfect time to revisit the Master of Suspense, and take a look at the best films he offered.  For me, these 15 selections are the finest works he ever accomplished; and also, from a screenwriting perspective, many of these films are great not just because of Hitch's direction, but also the eloquent and wonderful scripts posted by men like Samuel Taylor, Ben Hecht, John Michael Hayes, and Joseph Stefano.

So with no further ado, I bid you "Good evening", and here we go….

15. Suspicion (1941)

A collaboration between Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, Hitchcock's Suspicion is a lesser known dramatic thriller but an enjoyable one regardless.  Despite the ending being destroyed in the editing room (on insistence from the censorship board at the time — a shame, because the original written by Joan Harrison and Samuel Ralpheson is deceptively wicked), Suspicion is still an intriguing romance gone horribly wrong.  Fontaine is wonderful as the slowly suspicious wife of Cary Grant, who may or may not be planning on killing her.  It may run a little slowly in the first half, but by the end (with the brightly lit glass of poison milk) you'll still find yourself on the edge of your seat.

14. Rebecca (1940)

The only Hitchcock film to ever win a Best Picture Oscar (yeah, it pisses me off too), Rebecca is a delightful Gothic drama, infused with enough tense moments to still be labelled a thriller.  For me, Rebecca is not in the upper tier of Hitchcock films, and even the acting from the normally great Laurence Olivier is sometimes so melodramatic it can be a distraction.  But what saves the film from being a completely lesser Hitchcock are the great cinematography and set design, which often feels like a suffocating nightmare by Edgar Allen Poe, and the performances of Joan Fontaine (her first appearance for Hitch) and Judith Anderson as the wonderfully devilish Mrs. Danvers.  The scene where Anderson tries to persuade Fontaine to kill herself is as tense as anything Hitch ever made before or after.

13. The Birds (1963)

For me, The Birds is two films put into one — the first, an hour long love story that is notable for its naivety and its inability to be anything more than boring and mundane, and the second, which is terrifying, claustrophobic, and nearly perfect.  The Birds takes an excruciatingly long time to arrive at its second half, which is a shame, because despite the occasional flourish or small scene of suspense, there is no denying the dullness of Birds' first hour.  But once Hitch's true intentions arrive (and it's hard to say how much this was his decision to "mislead" the audience, or screenwriter Evan Hunter's lack of direction), The Birds is a shocking horror film, with several scenes that will be forever etched in my memory.  Its hard to make rotoscoped or mechanical birds scary to a modern audience, but Hitch pulled it off.

12. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

For me, this is the masterpiece of Hitchcock's work in the 30's and earlier.  Despite being slightly tarnished with the "remake that wasn't really a remake but it kinda totally was" Flightplan, Lady Vanishes is an exceptional thriller both then and now.  I consider myself a fairly well-attuned movie-goer, and even I couldn't see the ending coming quite the way it did.  Almost completely set within a train (a set restriction that Hitch loved working with, as is evidenced by several films later in this post), Vanishes tells a great mystery story about an important woman seemingly and impossibly vanishing, and the search for her that results in action, tension, and comedy.  It's a light Hitchcock, but an excellent one.

11. Frenzy (1972)

Scorned by the American critics who used to love him so much after the failures of Torn Curtain, Marnie, and Topaz, Hitch went back to his roots literally and figuratively with Frenzy, a perfectly Hitchcockian thriller set in his homeland in England.  It's deliciously stereotypical of his works, particuliarly in the mix of food, sex, and violence.  However, due to it being made in the far less restricting 70's, it's also the most shocking of any Hitchcock film — filled with sex, nudity, and rape murders, Frenzy is possibly his most uncomfortable and disturbing movie, one that Patricia Hitchcock refused to let her children see.  If perhaps it's a more angry Hitchcock then we're used to seeing, it's also a brilliant Wrong Man On The Run tale, where the villian (wonderfully played by Barry Foster) is far more charming and likeable than the hero. 

10. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock's personal favourite of all his films, and it's easy to see why — it's filled with his frequent favourite themes, such as muder talks at the dinner table, the theme of doubles, the Wronged Man, etc.  But it still holds up beautifully today — even though the screenplay was by Thornton Wilder and Sally Benson, Doubt feels incredibly personal to Hitch, and indeed might be one of his most autobiographical films.  Of course, it's also a ripper of a dramatic thriller, with several light comedic moments interspersed throughout the tension.  While it's far from perfect — the romantic subplot involving Theresa Wright and the detective on her uncle's trail is underdeveloped and rushed, for instance — Doubt can still enthrall along with the best, and the climax on a speeding train is just as exciting as anything found in Hitch's later, more famous films.

9. Marnie (1964)

Ohhhh, Marnie.  The more you know about it's behind-the-scenes creation, the more interesting it becomes, almost like watching a train wreck that still somehow turns out magnificent.  Marnie is a mess, true, but it's a great mess, one filled with shocking scenes that Hitch had never before attempted (such as the bloody finale, and especially the rape scene with Sean Connery and Tipi Hedren).  It's frequently dismissed as "minor Hitch", and it was a box office bomb upon release, but if you get a chance to read the great book The Dark Side of Genius by Donald Spoto, you will know just how far down the disturbing rabbit hole Hitchcock and Hedren went for this film.  In bullet points, Hitch fell in dark sexual lust for her during the making, and when she refused his advances, he deliberately set out to destroy his own creation.  Knowing that, it's almost impossible to watch Marnie and not see the simmering hatred and love bubbling from within.

8. Notorious (1946)

This was one of Hitch's most successful films, both critically and commercially, and because it was made in 1946, it helped establish the director as a possible artist as well as a great entertainer.  Starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in what could be the best performances either ever gave for Hitch, Notorious is a gripping little spy thriller, as well as a rather twisted romance.  If you've seen Mission Impossible 2, then you already know the plot, but trust me when I say that Ben Hecht, the brilliant screenwriter and frequent collaborator of Hitchcock, took this story in a much more interesting and purposeful direction.  While not as flashy and ornately suspenseful as Hitch's other films, Notorious still has justly famous moments that will always stick out in your memory, such as the long dolly shot from the top of a ballroom down into Ingrid's hands holding a key, or the descent down the staircase to possible doom in the finale.

7. Rope (1948)

Rope is sadly a film that even Hitchcock admirers often swipe under the table, dismissing it as an "experiment that didn't work" (a phrase even Jimmy Stewart would later say about the film).  But I completely disagree — I think that while perhaps the style of the film trumps the substance (everything is shot in 10 minute long takes), Rope is still a dramatic, intense, and darkly funny thriller.  Hitch gets blamed for the film being a commercial failure because of his insistence on removing editing from the movie, but even from a not-filmmaker's perspective, you have to admit that it was an incredibly ballsy and consistently interesting approach.  It's easy to do today with digital cameras, but back then his decision made the film ten times harder to make.  John Daly gives a great performance as one of two possibly homosexual killers, and James Stewart enters uncomfortably dark territory in the end when he clues it all together.  And lets not forget the brilliant script by Arthur Laurents and Hume Croyn, which had the difficult task of making these blatantly gay murderers slip by the censors of the time and appear totally hetero.

6. Spellbound (1945)

Along with Rope and Marnie, Spellbound is probably Hitch's most underrated work, often ignored for his more succesful thrillers from the 40's like Notorious and Rebecca.  However, I find Spellbound to be his best pre-50's work — shockingly expressive, often suspenseful as well as romantic, and occasionally goose-bump terrifying.  Admittedly the romantic subplot is the film's weakest aspect, if for no other reason than for the limits of what you can show in a 1940's romance (because certainly, we can't blame the wonderful actors Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck).  It was also one of the first films to showcase psychotherapy to a mass audience, so it's handling of that subject matter can sometimes seem dated.  But despite these flaws, Spellbound is absolutely spellbinding (ho ho), with a wicked twist filmed with some eye-popping special effects moments and a dream sequence by Salvador Dali that is as disturbing as it is beautiful.

5. North by Northwest (1959)

Often classified as yet another thriller from the Master of Suspense, North by Northwest is actually best viewed today as a light-hearted comedy.  Yes, there are a few tense moments (the crop duster sequence and chase across Mount Rushmore are still brilliant, if admittedly flawed in it's execution by Hitch), and the action sequences are great fun.  But the film has a massive touch of humour that is often absent in other Hitchcock films — rather than merely a quip here or there about murder or food, North's dialogue is almost entirely sharp, witty, and hilarious.  The screenplay by Ernest Lehman gets little credit today, and probably even less in later years.  But just watch the dinner scene between Cary Grant (never more charming than here) and Eva Marie Saint, where they banter back and forth and every single line is a witty double entendre.  Lehman personally elevates the film from another run-of-the-mill 50's thriller to something surprisingly modern and enjoyable from start to finish.

4. Strangers on a Train (1951)

Strangers on a Train is the film where Hitchcock finally went all out with his frequent theme of doubles — everything in this movie is a double, from the hero and villian "swapping" murders, to the woman who looks identical to the murderer's victim (who was played by Hitch's own daughter), to even the climactic and exciting tennis match in the end.  It's a very sneaky, duplicitous film, with twists and turns that even modern audiences won't completely and fully expect.  Robert Walker gives one of the most deliciously evil Hitchcock performances as Bruno Antony, a clearly homosexual psychopath who unfortunately crosses paths with Guy Haines, played by Farley Granger in what can only be charitably called a decent performance.  Despite the screenplay going through a tumultuous experience in the pre-production phase (with famous mystery novelist Raymond Chandler practically going to war with Hitch until he was replaced by Czenzi Ormande), everything clicks and gels, and is as smooth as any suspense film from the 50's. 

3. Rear Window (1954)

One of Hitch's most commercially popular films, Rear Window is pure entertainment from start to finish – it has laughs, romance, a good sense of humour, and yes, it gets tense as all bloody hell.  The story is now well known, of photographer L.B. Jeffries (wonderfully played by a well-behaved James Stewart) being stuck in his apartment after a bad accident, and winds up spying on his neighbours, particularly one Jeffries believes killed his wife.  If the villain himself has less personality than almost any other Hitchcock villain (except perhaps the one in Vertigo), well, that's understandable, given that the camera never actually leaves the one apartment.  It's a device used even more effectively than in Rope, and Hitch utilizes cross-cutting between what Jeffries sees and his reactions to it that we immediately forget about the set restrictions.  It's a very popular and famous movie for its suspense of freezing us inside the room with Jeffries, despite how badly we want to escape, but it should also be noted how wonderful John Michael Hayes' script is, and how humane.  It's a surprisingly warm film — one of Hitch's funniest, and all of that credit must go to Hayes' delicate script.

2. Psycho (1960)

The ultimate horror/suspense film; one that helped give birth to the so-called "slasher genre", but also one that helped re-establish Hitchcock as the master of suspense at a time where his old-school Victorian mystery movies were beginning to seem out of fashion.  Psycho shocked the world — banned in several countries, infamous for its stunning shower scene, horrifying with its use of jagged music by Bernard Herrmann; and for ultimate proof of Psycho's controversy — it was also Walt Disney's least favourite movie, and he claimed he would never let Hitchcock enter his Disneyland parks after seeing it.  The shower scene is justifiably famous, yes, but the film as a whole is just as brilliant and disturbing — the switching of main characters and making the audience complicit in murderous guilt goes far beyond anything Hitch had previously attempted, and the black and white cinematography makes everything seem more terrible and nightmarish than normal.  The ultimate reveal of Mrs. Bates is one of the most nail-biting suspense scenes ever filmed, even if it is followed by the admittedly stagnant psychiatrist speech.  And let's give Joseph Stefano more credit than he deserves — he took a rather repugnant book and wrote a terrific screenplay with identifiable characters and wonderful dialogue, such as the scene between Norman and Marion inside his office.  Possibly the best horror film of all time.

1. Vertigo (1958)

Rarely has there ever been a better film, by any director; rarely one more mysterious, more eloquent, more passionate, more beautiful, and yes – more suspenseful.  It's not only Hitchcock's masterpiece, but undoubtedly one of the finest films ever made (the once-every-ten-years Sight & Sound poll had the critics rate it the #1 greatest film of all time, finally besting the long-time king Citizen Kane).  It's a stunning achievement – a hypnotic mystery film, where the suspense and intrigue only remain dark undercurrents underneath a surprisingly moving love story, but then eventually bubble out and surprise even the most jaded of audience members.  Jimmy Stewart gives the performance of a lifetime, ultimately going against type as a detective who falls in love with the woman he's following, then becomes obsessed by her after death — so much so, he creates a new girlfriend into the image of the dead one (a tactic often used by Hitchcock himself on his unsuspecting starlets).  The film becomes progressively darker and more brutal, but throughout it remains hypnotically romantic; the cinematography is lush and colourful, the music by Bernard Herrmann is one of his most evocative, and the screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor (which was a pre-production nightmare of wrestling with the film's true themes) is incredible.  Overall, this is Hitchcock's towering achievement, and one of only a small handful of films that can easily be labelled as "perfect".