Hitchcock

I've been watching a lot of Hitchcock films lately. They are from the Hitchcock Signature collection, which is mostly stuff from the forties and fifties. I don't own any Hitchcock in my collection, I've rented them from Netflix.

I started with North by Northwest, then on to Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Foreign Correspondent, Suspicion and Stage Fright, with The Wrong Man, I Confess, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith to come. I'm also renting Notorious, which at the moment I consider my favorite Hitchcock film.

Of course, that just scratches the surface of Hitchcock's canon. You could rattle off ten of his films and someone might say that their favorite hasn't been listed. He made so many films over such a long period of time, and yet they all seem to have a distinctive touch that instantly identify them as his. He's sort of the Shakespeare of film.

Of this recent bunch, North by Northwest is probably the best, it's a grand entertainment, even if no one lives on the top of Mount Rushmore. Strangers on a Train contains one of the creepiest performances ever, by Robert Walker, who seemed to set the standard for stalking, a term that hadn't even been invented yet. Dial M for Murder is very stagey, befitting its source, but is an easy pleasure, even with all that talk of keys. And my favorite part of Foreign Correspondent may have been an early performance by George Sanders, as a good guy.

As for Stage Fright, I had never seen it before and knew nothing about it. Therefore I was a sucker for what is known as the "false flashback," which Hitchcock claimed was a mistake. I thought it was ingenious, and made the movie interesting.