My 3 favorite Hitchcock movies

North by Northwest 
Rebecca
Spellbound

North by Northwest
The 39 Steps
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Rear Window

Shadow of a Doubt

Strangers on a Train

(After that would probably be North by Northwest, then Lifeboat—or Vertigo?)

Oh, golly gosh. I hate picking favorites, but also hate passing up any opportunity to discuss anything Hitchcock. Almost every one of his films carries its own appeal. 

Rear Window and North By Northwest, deservedly among his most popular, are like beloved old friends who are always good company no matter how many times you've heard their stories; the fun of dropping in on Jeff, Lisa, Stella and Doyle, or hitting the road with Roger, never diminishes. Psycho never fails to impress with the virtuosity of its cinematic technique and narrative structure, nor The Birds with its technical ambition and execution or its ambiguity. Frenzy and its older cousin Stage Fright charm with their quirky yet perverse good humor, as does To Catch A Thief with its opulent, romantic glamour or The Lady Vanishes and Foreign Correspondent do with their balance of lightness of spirit and briskly-paced peril. In other words, there's something good to say about nearly every Hitchcock film.

There are two, however, that burnish themselves with each viewing: Notorious, which combines the best of many of these aspects with thematic depth unusual for the period, and wraps it all up in polished, sure-footed artistry, and Lifeboat, which accomplishes the seemingly impossible: planting eight principle characters within the most confined of spaces, relying almost entirely upon the psychological drama of their disparate personalities, viewpoints and priorities, while remaining as visually interesting and cinematically kinetic as any film; Hitchcock dismissed many as "pictures of people talking," but demonstrated with this one how even that can be achieved without surrendering to stasis.



 

First, I’ve found that all Hitchcock films ( I think I’ve seen all the sound films of which prints exist) are worth watching, and even the most flawed ones are entertaining

These three are consistently rewarding with very few of the flaws that plague Hitchcock’s output


Notorious- perfect cast , with no single performance that lacks focus or is clumsy. Story is beautifully imagined with a great balance of clever plot and well defined character.

Foreign Correspondant. - Strong cast with Lorraine Day giving one of her better performances . Two of the great Hitchcock set pieces , The escape through the sea of umbrellas and The plane crash.

The Lady Vanishes- brilliant story and four strong leads, plus a well assorted group of minor characters and the joy of Caldicott and Charters’ first appearance.

Things that weaken a Hitchcock film


1- script - sometimes Hitchcock errs on the side of cleverness, allowing the personal relations between the characters, and their individuality to be a little by- THe - numbers. I think this is a flaw in North by Northwest. Both Thornhill and eve are almost caricatures, the superficial ad man and The girl with a past. Cary Grant is so charismatic that he forces us to care about him. Eva Marie Saint succeeds by being a little against type. The part worked because she’s not a bosom-y beauty , but a classy elegant good girl type, so discovering she is a loose woman, and then learning she’s serving her country, comes as a surprise.

2- Acting - Hitchcock is a director that notoriously pays little attention to actors. His scenes are all story boarded before shooting and he’s interested in recording a certain arrangement of people and objects in a frame. Sometimes this means he lets a clumsy performance stay in the film. One example is the little girl who speaks English , translating for Joel Macrae to the Dutch police in Foreign Correspondant. I imagine Hitchcock just got bored with trying to get the little actress to speak her Dutch lines better, and decided she looked right so it would be alright. It’s something he also tolerates in adults and it always surprises me. The Black Babysitter on the phone in Rear Window, The crying of the woman whose dog was killed in the same film, the drunk end of the world man in The Birds, some of the children in The Birds with their unrealistic kicking on the ground ( though little Veronica Cartwright was terrific) are some examples of clumsy acting that always jars me out of the world of the picture.

Rear Window, North By Northwest, Rebecca.

Yeah it's quite funny. Holds up incredibly well.

Another awesome thing about it is the set design. That replica of new York city in the window is incredibly detailed. Complete with lights that change as the movie progresses and all.

Oh, and the characters. Evil just oozes through them. Even when they do good deeds, it's only with underhanded and mocking tones.

What you'll find stranger is my least favorite Hitchcock film, and the only one I can say I truly didnt like other than topaz was The Birds. I still dont get that movie. A bunch of birds attack...because? And the characters in the film are just dumb. Oh, birds are attacking. Let's run a group of kids outside...what could go wrong? And the forced romance makes me want to gag.

Hitchcock was great at human villains, so having a film where the antagonists are creatures ruins it to me. I mean, I like some of the effects, but I dont get the hype for it.