The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: From The Wrong Man to The Birds

Hey friends, we're back with the second installment of The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch.  Last time we talked about his final five movies, which are not well known.  Today we're doing the opposite and talking about the next-to-last five movies, which is a list packed with Greatest Hits.

Here are the movies that we'll be talking about today.  If you haven't seen these, you've at least heard of them.  There are a few that the kids will be willing to watch, and the music is on point.

The Wrong Man (1956)
Vertigo (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)

As per usual, let's talk about them in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order.

Spoiler rating for this post: medium.  I discussed the plots but avoided specifics.

The Birds (1963)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in San Francisco, and Mitch and Melanie, who are two attractive single people, meet cute in a pet store.  Improbable and cringy things happen and the story moves to Bodega Bay, where Mitch is visiting his widowed mother and young sister.  Melanie is in a boat continuing the meet cute events when a seagull swoops down and pecks her head.

Small town meet cute stuff ensues with episodes of strange bird incidents.  The relationship between Mitch and Melanie grows, and she learns that his mother, Lydia, is possessive and has broken up his previous relationships because she fears losing her son.  Melanie has mommy issues herself because her mother abandoned her as a child.  Now that we've got our background set and Melanie is running out of reasons to stay in Bodega Bay, the random weird bird things ramp up to the birds outright attacking humans. The attacks come in waves, stop abruptly, and then start up again.

After one of the attacks there is some small town chit chat where someone mentions that hmmm this town never had any bird attacks until Melanie showed up.  Coincidence?  Maybe she's a witch!

The bird attacks continue.  By the end of the movie we don't know any more about why the attacks started, if they have stopped, how far they have spread, or if Melanie is the cause of it all.  We only know which characters are still alive and what their next move will be.

The Birds is based on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, which is a name that we will be seeing again in our Hitchcock journey.  The story is absolutely worth reading, because it has all of the creepy "what if birds did decide to attack humans?" vibes, and every other aspect is completely different.  The setting of the story is a farm village in England, and the characters are a farmer and his family.

What I think of the movie

• Before: like it
• After: like it, on the edge of loving it

What makes The Birds great is the suspense and the concept of "oops there are more birds than people in this world so if they ever turn on us we're in trouble".  It's food for thought.

Where The Birds is weak is the setup of Mitch and Melanie's relationship.  He's rude to her right out of the gate for no reason, and of course she rearranges her whole weekend to chase after him.  If that part of the story had just had a little tweaking this would be a first rate movie.  With that said, I like very much how the relationship works out and the bond that forms between Melanie and Mitch's family.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  Yes!  Union Square is prominently featured in the opening shot, and I got to walk by there on my SF Hitchcock tour.  The main action of the movie takes place in Bodega Bay.  Hitchcock supposedly wanted to end the movie with a shot of birds covering the Golden Gate Bridge, but the studio nixed it.

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  Yes!  Lydia does not want her son to get married because she fears that he will leave her, so she is frosty to all of his lady friends.  Melanie's mother abandoned her at a young age, leaving a huge hurt that lingers.  By the end of the movie it is clear that Lydia has not lost her son and Melanie has gained a mother.  This might be the only Hitchcock Mommy Issues movie with a resolution, and it's very sweet to see.

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Apart from the mommy issues, no.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Tippi Hendren!  We talked about her in Marnie last time, but as a refresh this was her first of two Hitchcocks, she is Melanie Griffiths's mother/Dakota Johnson's grandmother, and she is left handed.
• Not an actor, but author Daphne Du Maurier was a frequent Hitchcock flier.  This was their last collaboration.
• Also not an actor, but the sound effects were directed by composer Bernard Herrmann, who we last heard from when we talked about Marnie, and who we'll be talking about a lot in this post and the next one to come.  The Birds has no music store, and yet his mark is unmistakeable.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? My opinion is yes with caveats.  I saw it as a young 'un, and my mom made me close my eyes when the first body is found.  It was scary but I loved it.  I recommend prescreening it, and weighing the probability of your kid (and you) having nightmares.  It is scary, but it's "when nature goes wrong" scary instead of "bad people doing bad things" scary.  I think that the unresolved whys of the movie are perfect for younger imaginations.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Love it.  He walks out of the pet store at the same time that Melanie walks in early in the movie with his two dogs.  That's right, his dogs got cameos.  In return it's only fair to give my dog a cameo in this post.

Psycho (1960)

General plot summary and trivia

Everyone knows what this movie is about.  It's about a woman who gets stabbed in a shower to a chorus of shrieking violins and then we cut to a creepy smiling guy.

That is not what this movie is about at all.  Forget the memes, and let's take a fresh look.

The movie begins with Marian and Sam bumping uglies in a hotel room in Phoenix.  They are in a long distance relationship and they are in love, but Sam is in debt so they can't get married (that was a thing back then).  Marian doesn't want to continue the relationship because it's wrong to sleep with someone you're not married to (also a thing back then).  They have the kind of problem that only money can solve.

It's Friday afternoon and Sam catches a plane back to his home in California, and Marian heads back to the office where it just so happens that a client is dropping off a $40,000 cash payment.  Her boss is nervous about having the money in the office and asks Marian to take it to the bank ASAP.  The temptation is too much, and the next thing you know she and the money are on a road trip from Arizona to California.  She drives until she is too tired to continue, and pulls off to the side of the road where a police officer finds her car the next morning and tells her to get a room next time.

The next day Marian drives until she reaches the point where she is about to fall asleep at the wheel, and she sees a sign for the Bates Motel and stops for the night.  Norman, who is the owner of the hotel, is a young man who is a little odd, but very nice.  He offers to bring her dinner, and they have a nice chat.  She hears him arguing with his mother, and during their conversation he opens up about the stress of living with an aging parent.  In the meantime, she has figured out that stealing $40,000 is a bad solution for her problems, and tells Norman that she will be leaving early in the morning to drive back to Arizona.  She goes back to her room, and hops into the shower.

There were times when Hitchcock dropped spoilers to direct the audience's attention where he wanted it to go, but Psycho was not one of those movies.  Hitchcock bought the rights to the book anonymously, and then bought up as many copies of the book as he could to get it out of circulation.  The trailer is six minutes of him wandering around the Bates Motel set with no shots of the movie.  He set a policy with the theaters that no one would be admitted to the movie after the beginning.

Other trivia things to note is that the studio that he had been working for refused to make the movie, so he bankrolled it on his own.  The censorship standards of the time were not keen on showing oodles of blood, so he chose to shoot the movie in black and white as a way to tone things down.  Since he was already so far over the line, he upped the ante and not only showed the toilet in Marian's bathroom, but also showed the toilet being flushed (not gratuitous, it's a plot point).  I've heard some chatter that this was the first time a toilet was ever shown in a movie, which isn't quite true and there's a reddit thread for that.  But it is true that toilets in movies back in the day were not common.  There's a bit of office ladies room footage in Marnie four years later that was toilet free.

Psycho was Hitchcock's final black and white movie, and also his final MacGuffin.

What I think of the movie

• Before: love it
• After: love it

I didn't see Psycho until much later in my Hitchcock journey.  Like I said, I was just not sold on seeing a movie about a woman who gets stabbed in the shower by a creep.  It was such a revelation when I sat down to watch the movie and didn't see anyone getting into a shower for a good long time.  I became totally absorbed in Marian's story, and then became absorbed in watching the characters solve the mystery.  I can't stress enough how wonderful this movie is and how much I recommend watching it.

I do have a short list of nits to pick:

• The movie feels the need to explain Norman's psychology at the end, which feels very clunky and dated.
• A small detail that I didn't pick up until this watch of the movie.  When Marian checks into the Bates Motel and asks Norman if there is somewhere she can get dinner, he tells her that town of Fairvale is 15 miles away.  THAT'S WHERE SAM LIVES!!!!  It's true that she had gotten lost and was exhausted, but she stayed at the weird motel after learning that she was so close?
• And there is a full "oh come on now" moment when Marian gets into the shower.  She marches right in there, stands under the shower head, and turns the water on full force.  Just sayin' that every shower that I've used in my life takes a second to warm up.

Is there a MacGuffin?  Yes!  I go back and forth over whether this movie is about Marian or about Norman.  It's two distinct halves that make a whole (Oops!  Spoiler!).  By anyway you look at it, there is MacGuffining afoot.  If this movie is about Marian, then Norman's mother is the MacGuffin, and if the movie is about Norman, then the $40,000 is the MacGuffin.

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  Yep!

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Not really.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Janet Leigh: better known to you as Jamie Lee Curtis's mom.
• Anthony Perkins: this was his most famous role, and I can't stress how good he is.  He is left handed, and I can't say more without spoilers, but let's just say that he performs certain actions left hand dominant and other actions right hand dominant.
• Vera Miles.  We'll be seeing that name again in this post.
• Pat Hitchcock: who?  That would be Alfred Hitchcock's daughter of course!  This was her last appearance in one of her dad's movies, and it's always a treat when we get to see her.  She plays Marian's coworker, and she's very funny.
• Bernard Herrmann did the music.  If you think it is all screaming violins, you are incorrect.  Take a listen!

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids?  I personally would not have shown this to the boys when they were in middle school, but the main reason is that it's about boring things that grown ups do.  The Birds is an easier case to make, since it isn't specifically adult focused.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Meh.  He's standing in the sidewalk outside of Marian's office toward the beginning of the movie.

North by Northwest (1959)

General plot summary and trivia

Roger O. Thornton is a Madison Avenue advertising man who makes Don Draper look like a slob.  One evening he meets up with his advertising cronies for drinks, and realizes that he needs to get a message to his mother, and since it's 1959 he can't text her so he has to send a telegram.  Meanwhile the bellboy is wandering through the bar paging a man named Mr. Kaplan.  Roger signals to the bellboy to send the telegram, which gives the impression to onlookers that he is Mr. Kaplan answering the page.  Before you can say "wrong man theme" two toughs grab him and drag him away out to a house in the country.  Events ensue, a murder is committed, and Roger has to go on the run.  His only hope is to find the mysterious Mr. Kaplan so that he can find out what is going on and clear his name.  The journey takes him to Chicago by train and to Mount Rushmore by Northwest Airlines.  Along the way he meets a sexy and intelligent blonde on a train who helps hide him from the police.  But it seems like she's awfully chummy with the bad guys.

Let's get a visual on this one.  It's the one with the guy being chased by a plane and climbing Mount Rushmore.

What I think of the movie

• Before: love it
• After: love it

I don't know of anyone who doesn't like this movie.  It's the GOAT.  If you're interested in seeing a Hitchcock movie but haven't yet, either this or Rear Window is an excellent choice for your first Hitchcock.  It's a very specific glance into life in the late 50s, but it also has a fresh and timeless feel.  Ladies don't always get the best treatment in Hitchcock movies, but Eve is a notable exception.  She has a career, she's smart, she has a good reason for the things that she does, and a timeless wardrobe.

It's also a movie that I've seen very frequently in the past few months.  I watched it on the plane when I flew to BC in August, and I watched it with Elisabeth in September.  I had some doubts that I would have the capacity to watch it again for this project, and gave myself the option of skipping it since it was so fresh in my mind.  But when the time came I found myself eagerly sitting down on the couch and watching it again.  It never gets old.

Is there a MacGuffin?  It has the MacGuffiniest of MacGuffins!  I can't tell you what it is for spoiler reasons, but I think this might be my favorite MacGuffin..

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Big time!

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  Not in the classic Hitchcock sense.  Roger and his mother have a healthy relationship.  The only issue is the casting.  Cary Grant was born in 1904, and Jessie Royce Landis was born in 1896, so she was a very young mother.  The mother and son duo appear at the end of the trailer that I linked.

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yes!  Hitchcock had been making spy movies since the 30s, and he kept refining the theme.  I smell shades of The 39 Steps (an outsider wanders into the middle of a spy ring) and Notorious (Cary Grant has to figure out how he feels about his gal sleeping with the enemy.  He handles it a lot better this time).

There are two future forwards:

• The car ride down the mountain was lifted with no improvements in Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot.
• When the Professor and Roger walk toward the airplane, the Professor starts to explain the details of the agency he works for and the spy ring.  We don't need to know these details for the plot, and the noise of a plane drowns out their conversation.  This device was expanded brilliantly in Topaz.

Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters?  Dang, I didn't think to track this until now since it hasn't come up yet, so we'll just add it in to the questionnaire as needed.  Yes!  Leonard and VanDamm make a few comments toward the end of the movie that make it seem like they have a thing going on.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Cary Grant and Leo G. Carroll were frequent Hitchcock fliers.  This was their last movie that either actor made with him.
• Baby Martin Landau!
• Double Southpaw alert!  Both Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are lefties.  He was a closeted lefty (back in the day kids were encouraged to write with their right hands no matter what) and she is an out lefty.
• Bernard Herrmann music!

While we're talking about handwriting, one trivia fact that I adore is that modern audiences have trouble reading the notes written in cursive.

 

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes, yes, yes!  We saw this with the boys on NYE 2020 and they loved it.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Love it!  He misses a bus right at the end of the opening credits.

Vertigo (1958)

General plot summary and trivia

Scotty is a police detective who joins a rooftop chase.  He slips and nearly falls to his death, and another police officer dies trying to help him. The incident leads to a diagnosis of vertigo, and Scotty retires from the force rather than to settle for a desk job.  He is told that the only thing that will make it better is if he experiences another traumatic shock (a very unsubtle spoiler dropped early in the movie).

Scotty is contacted by Gavin Elster, a man that he went to college with but barely knows.  Elster is concerned about his wife Madeline who has become preoccupied by the tragic story of her great grandmother Carlotta and is acting strangely.  Elster asks Scotty to take the job of following Madeline around to figure out what is going on so that he can figure out how to help her.  Scotty's first answer is a hard pass since he's retired and not looking for work, but after he sees Madeline he agrees to help.  Two things are clear: something very strange is going on with Madeline, and Scotty is hopelessly obsessed with her.

One day Madeline and Scotty find themselves heading up a staircase in a tall building and Something Bad happens which Scotty is helpless to prevent due to his vertigo.  Time passes, and Scotty remains as obsessed with Madeline as ever, but he can't have her now.  But he can have Judy, a woman that he passes on the street who bears an uncanny resemblance to Madeline.  Or at least she would if she was blonde and had a few other tweaks...hey wait a minute, Judy looks way too much like Madeline.  What on earth is going on here?  At this point Hitchcock lets the audience in on the secret so that we're free to sit back and watch Scotty figure it out.

What I think of the movie

• Before: love it
• After: love it

Vertigo was an acquired taste for me.  The first time that I saw it, I didn't like it at all.  This movie shows a dark/pervy side of James Stewart, and it made me uncomfortable.  The story felt a little out there and improbable.  But then I saw it a second time, and it grew on me.

I wasn't the only one who had a negative first reaction to Vertigo.  The movie was panned by the critics and was less successful than his other movies, so it was considered to be a failure at the time of its release.  Around this time Hitchcock had the chance to purchase the rights to five of his movies: Rope, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, and Vertigo.  He took the movies out of circulation, which was a brilliant move, because no one could see them so there was an intense build up of curiosity.  The movies were rereleased after Hitchcock's death and the world was suddenly singing a very different tune on Vertigo.  It's a high scorer on best movies of all times list, most notably taking the top spot on Sight and Sound's Top Movie list.

Is there a MacGuffin?  No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme? No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  Yes yes yes yes yes!!!  This movie is a love letter to San Francisco.  I got to walk past a number of the filming sites on the Alfred Hitchcock walking tour.

 

The Elster's Apartment Building in 2025

Judy's hotel in 2025.  The bar downstairs is named Carlotta's after Madeline's great grandmother

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  The only recurring theme that I could come up with is Hitchcock trying to show the dark side of a popular movie star, which he previously tried to do with Ivor Novello in 1926 and Cary Grant in 1941 but ran up against front office pushback and had to pull his punches.  He got much further with Dark Jimmy Stewart.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• James Stewart was a frequent Hitchcock flier.  This was their last movie.
• Kim Novak is here to rep Team Southpaw!
• Barbara Bel Geddes is Midge, Scotty's not-quite-girlfriend.

Remember what I said about ladies not always getting the best treatment in Hitchcock movies?  Vertigo is a prime example.  Midge's mission in life is to save Scotty, Madeline is an illusion, and Judy is under pressure to be Madeline II.  Bel Geddes and Novak absolutely rock their thankless tasks.  Midge is intelligent and wears her heart on her sleeve, even if the movie forgets about her halfway through.  Novak brings a "hey I am a human being please treat me as such" quality to both of her roles that is very haunting.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Content wise there are no issues, but I wouldn't because it's about boring adult stuff.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  If you blink, you'll miss it.  He walks by Elster's office carrying a small musical instrument.  This was the last of many cameos where he carries an instrument.

The Wrong Man (1956)

General plot summary and trivia

Well, the title kinda says it all.  Manny Balestrero is a professional musician who plays base at the Stork Club by night and is a devoted family man by day.  He is also broke as a joke, and he and his wife are trying to figure out how to come up with $300 for a dental bill in a pre-credit card era.  Oh hey, they both have insurance policies that they can borrow against, so problem solved!  Manny trots off to the insurance office to get it done.  It seems like things are looking up, but the audience has been picking up on an impending sense of doom since the first minute of the movie.

When Manny walks into the insurance office the Doom Vibe ramps up to 11.  The workers recognize him as the man who held up their office a few months ago.  They tell him that his wife will need to come in since it's her policy, and the second he walks out the door, they call the police.

The police are waiting for Manny when he gets home, and in a pre-Miranda era he cooperates like a lamb.  They take him out on the town and have him walk through a liquor store and a drug store where the workers ID him as the man who robbed him.  The police ask Manny to write down the words that the robber used in a hold up note, and sure enough his handwriting is a match and he even makes the same mistake that the robber did in the letter.  Case closed!

Next stop: hell.  The legal system does its work and Manny and his wife race against the clock to prove his innocence.

The Wrong Man was based on a true story, and the real Manny Balestrero was paid more for the movie than he was for his wrongful arrest suit.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Don't remember it, but I think it was boring
• After: Oof it's boring.  For purposes of this project, it's a meh.

But just because a movie is boring doesn't mean that it's not important or that I regret seeing it.  Today we live in a world of DNA testing and we've spent our entire lives watching cases get overturned for wrongful convictions.  In the 1950s the idea that there could be a mountain of evidence against an innocent person was much more shocking.  It's also valuable to see what the world looked like before Miranda law.  Manny cooperates with the police "because an innocent man has nothing to fear" and ends up incriminating himself.

Good stuff to say: the music!  Oh wow the music - thank you Bernard Herrmann!  Real NYC shooting locations!  The contrast between the scenes when Manny is at work at the glamorous Stork Club vs the drabness of his everyday life.

Bad stuff to say: the movie walks a line between near fiction and a straight up documentary, and it falls too much on the documentary side.  It's just...you know...boring.  Manny was an ordinary man leading an ordinary but not boring life.  It feels like someone fell asleep in the writer's room.

Is there a MacGuffin?  No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  Yes

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  See title of movie

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No.  Manny's mother is the best Hitchcock Mom that we've seen yet.  Since we're tracking Bad Moms we'll also keep an eye out for Good Moms as well.

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Apart from the wrong man theme, no.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Henry Fonda
• Vera Miles, who we last saw in Psycho.  Hitchcock picked her to be The Next Grace Kelly (more to come about that when we get to the Grace Kelly era in our next batch of movies), and was grooming her for stardom.  If everything had gone to plan she would have played Madeline in Vertigo, but she had a baby instead, and Hitch moved on to other leading ladies.
• The lady from The Birds who accursed Melanie of being a witch!
• Hey Bernard Herrmann!  Thanks for the music!

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids?  Content wise, yes, boredom wise no.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Meh.  It's not really a cameo, he introduces the movie.

_________________________

There you have it, our second Alfred Hitchcock recap.  Who's seen any of these movies and what did you think?

Tune in next time for the next five movies, which have us still solidly in the Greatest Hits Era.

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Rear Window (1954)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)