Aw friends, we did it! I rewatched every Alfred Hitchcock movie in reverse order, and you came along for the ride. Let's do some rankings and recaps, and figure out what we learned.
By the way, if you know what movie "all stories have an end" comes from, you are a bona fide Hitchcock fan. And if you don't know you will by the end of this post.
Recap Index
What's The Big Deal About Hitchcock Anyway?
Hitchcock is a name that I grew up with, and I love (most) of his movies. As I was writing this, I wondered how he compared with other directors who have had 50 year/50 movie careers, so I took it to google.
Oh.
There have been directors who have made more movies in less time, and directors who worked for 50 plus years and made fewer movies. A career of this length, with this level of excellence, and with almost all of the movies easily available to watch is a rare thing.
Why and How I Did the Rewatch
At some point last summer, the idea to rewatch every Alfred Hitchcock movie popped into my head, and this fall I went for it. I called it a retirement project, although I started the rewatch while I was still working. A better name for it is a Pokemon project, which is something that catches my attention and sends me on a mission to catch 'em all.
I considered watching the movies in order of interest, but I realized that this would make the project less rewarding over time. My next thought was to watch the movies in order, but I knew that this approach would front load the project with some of the less interesting movies.
Eventually I decided to start at the end and work my way backward, and I'm very happy with how that worked out. I got to see the newer movies that I was less familiar with first, then do the greatest hits, and then work my way back toward the early movies. There were enough gems in the early years plus the momentum of the later hits that carried me through.
As far as when I watched the movies, I watched a few movies each week entirely in the evenings. If I ran out of time, I paused the movie in the middle and picked it up the next night. The only time that I watched more than one movie in one day was Murder and Mary, which I watched on a very frigid and snowy Sunday. The movies were on the same DVD and there was nothing else going on that day.
I did not have a time goal to complete the rewatch, since I knew that I would enjoy it and that the project would build its own momentum. I wrote recaps every five movies, and there were times when I had to pause my watching to catch up with blogging.
The Biggest Surprise About Sourcing the Movies
Question: if you had to get your hands on 53 movies that were made between 1925 and 1976, do you think it would be harder to find the older movies or the newer movies?
I was very surprised to learn that it was harder to get the newer movies. For nearly all of the newer titles, I was hunting down library DVDs and waiting for interlibrary loans to come in. Nearly all of the early movies were available on free streaming sites (Kanopy, Hoopla, Amazon, and YouTube). Sourcing the movies became much easier as the project went on.
(A practical FYI to anyone who doesn't know this already: justwatch is my starting place to find movies and TV shows. My secondary sources are the DVD collections of the two big library systems that I have access to, and/or doing a Google search filtered for video and then making the judgement call if the link is safe to click or not. I've found that older movies with dicey copyright issues are sometimes on Youtube, but are not indexed so that they stay off the radar. A Youtube search will not show these titles, but a Google video search will.)
Wait, Are There 53 or 55 Movies?
Technically there are 55 movies, but two of the movies exist in two versions, so there are 53 titles. Blackmail (1929) has a silent and a sound version, and Murder (1930) was also made in a German language version called Mary (1931). For ratings purposes, I'm lumping the two Blackmails together and Murder and Mary together.
Most lists of Hitchcock movies have 53 titles, but with some variation. To me, no Hitchcock list is complete without Elstree Calling (1930), where he has a co-director credit. Plenty of lists leave Elstree off and include either The Mountain Eagle (1926), which is a lost movie, or have Murder and Mary listed separately to get to a count of 53.
What Did I Think About the Movies?
Well, duh, I loved them or I wouldn't have watched them, but here is what I thought of the movies going in compared to coming out.
The only problem with my rating system is that "meh" turned out to be too broad of a category. Here is a look at three of the mehs to explain why:
- I Confess (1953) has so many elements that could have made it a great movie, but there are holes in the story and the second half drags. This could have so easily been solved with a little more time in the writer's room.
- Champagne (1928) is a breezy jazz age comedy that Hitchcock said was his least favorite movie. To his point, there is no plot, but there are visuals galore and it was a ton of fun to watch. There is no reason to watch this movie unless you're on a Hitchcock completism bender, but it was enjoyable.
- The Skin Game (1931) is an early talkie museum piece that was painful to watch. One good actor and some creative camera work elevated this from a hate to a meh.
After thinking about it a bit, I came up with a more comprehensive rating system:
S Tier - superior, a near perfect movie
A Tier - a mighty fine movie
Real Fans Have Seen It - lower than the S and A tiers, but if you know your Hitchcock, you have seen and love these movies.
Off Beat - it's not traditional Hitchcock, but it's a gem.
Good but needed better writing - these movies are classic Hitchcock that IMO needed more time in the writers' room.
Guilty Pleasure - I can't justify these as being good movies, but I sure enjoyed them.
Completism but more fun - the only reason for someone to watch these movies is if they're watching all of the Hitchcock movies BUT these were still fun.
Completism Only - the only reason to watch these is because of Hitchcock. These titles are not necessarily terrible, but at times the watch felt like a chore.
Meh - these just didn't do it for me.
Woof - a nicer way to say that I hated these movies.
OK, Rate the Movies in Order of Best to Worst!
The truth is that I dearly love most of these movies, and all rankings are subjective. My new rating system gave me enough objectivity to give it a go. Here are the movies by tier in order of my personal preference under the duress of being forced to chose.
S Tier - The Best of the Best
Rear Window (1954) - North by Northwest (1959) - Psycho (1960) - Vertigo (1958) - Shadow of a Doubt (1943) - The Birds (1963)
Notorious (1946) - Rebecca (1940) - The 39 Steps (1935) - Strangers on a Train (1951) - Foreign Correspondent (1940) - Dial M for Murder (1954) - The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Real Fans Have Seen It
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) - Rope (1948) - Blackmail (1929) - Lifeboat (1944) - Saboteur (1942) - Sabotage (1936) - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) - Jamaica Inn (1939) - Secret Agent (1936) - Stage Fright (1950) - Marnie (1964) - Young and Innocent (1937)
Off Beat Gem
Frenzy (1972) - Topaz (1969) - Number Seventeen (1932) - The Manxman (1929)
Good But Needed Better Writing
The Wrong Man (1956) - I Confess (1953) - Suspicion (1941) - Spellbound (1945)
Guilty Pleasure
Elstree Calling (1930) - The Pleasure Garden (1925)
Completism But Fun
Rich and Strange (1931) - The Ring (1927) - Champagne (1928) - The Farmer's Wife (1928)
Completism Only
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) - Family Plot (1976) - Torn Curtain (1966) - Easy Virtue (1928) - Murder! (1930) - Waltzes from Vienna (1934) - The Skin Game (1931)
[Special shoutout to Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Torn Curtain for having one really great scene. The date night scene in Smith and the "we need to kill this guy without making any noise" scene in Curtain.]
Meh
The Trouble with Harry (1955) - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - To Catch a Thief (1955)
Woof
Downhill (1927) - The Paradine Case (1947) - Under Capricorn (1949) - Juno and the Paycock (1930)
I struggled with how to rate the woof list. Downhill has a nonsensical plot and drags on forever, but at least it has lead actor eye candy, so it gets best of the worst. The Paradine Case was taken out of Hitchcock's hands for the final edit, so that won it a better spot on the bad list.
That leaves us with Capricorn and Juno competing for the bottom spot. Capricorn was made at a time when everyone should have known better, and Juno was made at a time when most movies were boring, but even so it is spectacularly boring. Maybe Capricorn should have the bottom spot, but at least I was able to focus on it longer than I was for Juno.
Did I Change My Mind About Any of the Movies?
Yes! Obviously all of the "I don't remember it" rankings changed. The biggest surprise is that my "hate" list changed. I found that two of the titles just weren't that bad (Easy Virtue and the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much), but three titles on the "do not remember list" earned a hate/woof rating.
On the higher end of things, I liked Shadow of a Doubt much more on this watch, so I bumped it up to a love, and I wasn't as entranced by the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much so I bumped it down to a like. The Lady Vanishes, Dial M for Murder, and Suspicion went from meh to like.
Had I Really Seen All of the Hitchcock Movies?
That's a great question! For sure I had not seen Mary, which is the German language version of Murder, since I didn't know that it existed until I started the rewatch. I am suspicious that I had not seen a few of the "don't remember" titles: Waltzes From Vienna, The Paradine Case, Torn Curtain, and Topaz come to mind. In any case, I've seen them now!
Which Movie Took Me By Surprise The Most?
Topaz! It is Hitchcock's longest movie at 2 hours and 20 minutes, and while the last 20 minutes dragged and the ending was a mess, every minute that came before was fresh and on point.
If Topaz Is The Longest Movie Which Is The Shortest?
There is a literal answer and a correct answer. The print of The Pleasure Garden (1925) that is available to see is 59 minutes long, but a longer version is out there in the archives somewhere. The correct answer is Number 17 (1932) which is 63 ACTION PACKED minutes long.
Which Movie Should We Be Talking More About?
Well, all of them, but I think The Lodger (1927) wins the prize. I've heard it called "the first Hitchcock movie", meaning that it was not his first movie but it was the first movie with the Hitchcock touch. IMO anyone who says this has not seen The Pleasure Garden (1925), but we'll let that go.
The reason that The Lodger gets the shoutout is because of the story change that was forced on it. This movie was supposed to be about a serial killer who was a hottie, but the studio execs said no to using one of the most beloved heartthrobs of the day as a killer, so Hitchcock had to go back to the writer's room. The change in the script gave us our first MacGuffin (the movie about a serial killer turns out not to be about a serial killer) and our first Wrong Man.
Which Movie Deserves a Backhanded Compliment?
The award for Least Original Screenplay goes to Saboteur (1942). This movie is the standard Wrong Man story with two scenes that have eye raising similarities to other movies. Specifically the "blind guy in a cabin in the woods" scene from Bride of Frankenstein and the "we're going to hang out with the circus" scene that evokes Freaks (1932). Even so, I loved this movie.
Summarize Hitchcock's Career
Surely! I saw definite phases as I watched the movies. I don't think these would have stood out so much if I had watched the movies in random order.
1925-1929: Getting Started (The Pleasure Garden to Blackmail). Hitchcock was Hitchcock on day one, and it's amazing to see him roll out his signature touches for the first time.
1930-1934: I'm Kind Of A Big Deal But I Still Have To Pay My Mortgage (Elstree Calling to Waltzes from Vienna). At this point Hitchcock was still getting assigned to routine projects, but he was also getting to do more movies that he wanted to do.
1934-1939: Big Fish in a Little Pond (The Man Who Knew Too Much to Jamaica Inn). After the back to back hits of The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps, Hitchcock became a big star who could basically do whatever he wanted within the confines of British cinema.
1940-1947: Coming to America/The Golden Age I (Rebecca to The Paradine Case). Hitchcock went Hollywood and nabbed the Best Picture Oscar right out of the gate.
1948-1954: Experimental (Rope to Dial M for Murder). Over time most folks get settled in their careers and keep doing what they've been doing. Hitchcock was not most people. He started his own production company and took some time to play in the sandbox.
1954-1963: The Golden Age II (Rear Window to The Birds). This is the S tier era: Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds. The time in the sandbox paid off.
1964-1966: Old Dog (Marnie and Torn Curtain). Hitchcock was slowing down and came out with a couple of duds. Hey, the old guy had a good run.
1969-1976: New Tricks (Topaz to Family Plot). BAM!!! Hitchcock did not sleep in the twilight of his career. It's a matter of taste, but IMO Topaz and Frenzy are excellent and unexpected movies.
A Summary of the Tracking Points
Here are the special points that we tracked in the movies and what we learned from them.
Hitchcock said that he started doing cameos in the silent era for cost savings, and that later on folks came to expect the cameos so he was "forced" to keep doing them. According to him, he made a point to put them toward the beginning of the movies so that they wouldn't be a distraction from the story.
My take: the gentleman doth protest too much! I say that Hitchcock did the cameos because he wanted to put his face on his movies, and there is nothing wrong with that. Personally, the more noticeable a cameo was, the more I liked it.
My favorite cameo has not changed: it's Notorious. The good guys realize at the last minute that their plan of stealing the key to the wine cellar will be discovered if the party runs out of champagne. They walk past the wine table where Hitch is downing a glass of champagne.
Other favorite cameos?
Blackmail: a solid #2 spot. I believe this is his longest cameo.
Rebecca: his appearance is very brief, but the placement at a moment when the bad guy has just learned that he is not going to win is humorous.
Lifeboat: definitely the best of the limited set cameos. He is the "before" and "after" picture in a weight loss ad.
Stage Fright: love the double take at catching the lead character talking to herself.
To Catch a Thief: the most blatant "I'm here to give the people what they want" - I am the people and this is exactly what I want.
Let's also give a shoutout to Alma's (Mrs. Hitchcock's) cameo in The Lodger and his dogs' cameo in The Birds.
Have five minutes on your hands? Here's a rundown of every Hitchcock cameo.
What's the Deal With "All Stories Have an End?"
It's a title card in The Lodger, that bluntly tells the audience that the story is going to wrap up. Gotta appreciate a heads up.
Speaking of Wrapping Things Up, How About Doing That?
Sure thing! If you chose to watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie, I don't think that you will be disappointed. Rear Window or North by Northwest are great places to start.
If Alfred Hitchcock movies are not your jam, I hope that you will find your personal Pokemon and catch 'em all. Or most of them. There is no law that says that you have to have complete sets of all of your dreams.
What's Your Next Movie Watching/Pokemon Project?
I'll let you know when I find it!
Peace Out! Feel free to chime in with all things Hitchcock and let me know what you agree and disagree with. What's an example of a Hitchcock/Pokemon project for you?
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