Last week, we took a look a the career of actor Keanu Reeves. This week, we're going to do something radically different and take a look way back at the career of arguably the most famous director of all time.
Not every classic film director's work has aged terribly well. Some films, no matter how great, are undeniably products of their time. However, there are also directors whose work is timeless, and one of those is Alfred Hitchcock. The “master of suspense” Hitch, in his time, was the most famous director on the planet. Back then, directors were considered craftsmen, consigned to ply their trades behind-the-scenes. But Hitchcock, a rotund Englishman with a bald pate and a mischievous twinkle in his eye was something else.
Thanks in no small part to his habit of doing funny walk-ons in his movies (which were often ingenious – such as his photo on the back of a newspaper in LIFEBOAT) he was very recognizable. He was so big that he was given his own anthology TV show, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, where he'd cleverly introduce the episodes, which often had his stamp of approval (the show itself has some incredible segments such as the Steve McQueen-starrer “The Man from the South”). This made him an even bigger director, and his best work happened after the show, when he was granted unprecedented creative control.
This meant that inevitably, some of his more personal products – like VERTIGO – would be unappreciated in their day (to the extent that it was out of circulation for decades). But others, like PSYCHO, paid off enormously and, like his next film THE BIRDS, is a touchstone of horror cinema. But it doesn't stop there. In his fifty years of movie-making, Hitchcock made at least twenty classics, and even his lesser known films are always worth watching.
While PSYCHO or even VERTIGO would probably be the logical choice, I have a major soft spot for another of his classics, NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Starring his favorite leading man, Cary Grant, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is Hitch's strongest attempt at one of his recurring themes, the “innocent man” thriller where a milquetoast everyman would be accused of a crime and go on a cross-country flight from justice to clear his name. This started with his UK hit THE 39 STEPS, and was done again in the US with SABOTEUR. But NORTH BY NORTHWEST was the best. Grant, despite his good looks makes for a convincing everyman hero, and Hitchcock loads the movie with red-herrings and set-pieces, including the famous crop-duster sequence and a harrowing fight on top of Mount Rushmore. If you know about the early days of the James Bond saga, you'll be aware that this was a major influence the way those early films were shot and paced (Hitchcock himself loved the Bonds, and took several stabs at making his own, “realistic” Bond-style films with TOPAZE and TORN CURTAIN).
While Hitch made a few not so-great movies, one that I've never quite gotten was his remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. The old British version was better, and while it has some wonderful bits, and a great musical score by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann (his NORTH BY NORTHWEST score is one of the best ever), the movie doesn't quite work. Why? Two words: Doris Day. While James Stewart gives it his all (one of several movies they made together), Day doesn't suit Hitchcock's dark world at all, and is nowhere near as modern as the typical ice-cool Hitchcock blonde. It's an OK movie, but not one of his better ones.
I've always had a huge soft spot for FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. Only his second American film, it's an incredibly swift thriller. Focused on a then-neutral American reporter caught up in spy-plot in the early days of WW2 (the Americans would only enter the year after this came out), it's terribly exciting. Joel McCrea (who made a lot of great Preston Sturges movies) is a likable hero, but the film is stolen by George Sanders' suave, James Bond-like journalist. It's a pity they only did this and REBECCA together. The finale is mind-blowing considering its age, with an incredible and realistic plane crash all shot from inside the cockpit. So good.
Another brilliant one is SHADOW OF A DOUBT, which is considered one of his finest works by connoisseurs, but isn't one of his more famous movies. It's a pretty bold film for its era, being on the surface a slice-of-Americana, with the twist being the introduction of a remorseless serial killer into an otherwise wholesome world. Joseph Cotten's performance is a chilling precursor to what Anthony Perkins would later do in PSYCHO.
Hitchcock was the master of the set-piece, but his most famous, and best, is the shower scene from PSYCHO, which was incredibly sharp for 1960. It's amazing.
10. REBECCA
9. SHADOW OF A DOUBT
8.THE 39 STEPS
7. THE BIRDS
6. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
5. NOTORIOUS
4. VERTIGO
3. REAR WINDOW
2. PSYCHO
1. NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Despite having been dead for over thirty years, Hitchcock's world still fascinates people. For those of you who may only know about a few of Hitchcock's more famous movies, I hope this will encourage you to dig into his filmography. With very few exceptions, you can pretty much choose any of his films at random and be virtually guaranteed an excellent film.