Ranking All 56 Films of Alfred Hitchcock…from worst to best.

Ready for some delicious film-ranking controversy? Having this many Alfred Hitchcock films to work with is a real pleasure. There are 56 films total, with 3 requiring pairing up (you’ll see why), and so there are 53 ranked slots. I’ve come up with 7 Tiers—Enthusiastic, Great, Overrated, Underrated, Worthwhile, Workmanlike, and Sad and Awful. Now, this is a personal list, obviously, but I tried to be thorough and consistent, and none of these films received more attention than the others, with one exception where the best version was not immediately available to me.

There is one other Hitchcock-related film which I have chosen to not include, only because it is not fictional, but a very sobering documentary-about-a-documentary about the German Nazi camps. If you wish to see that film, it is called Night Will Fall, and is available to stream most places. The television material—mostly Alfred Hitchcock Presents—I do plan on writing about in the future.

So without further ado, here begins the list, starting with the very worst film Hitchcock ever made…

TIER 7.

SAD & AWFUL

—#53—

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955). Starring John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, and Edmund Gwenn. — This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. It’s filmed and decorated beautifully, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing on earth to convince me to watch it again. It’s supposed to be a black comedy, a sly, knowing, and witty film.The attempts to be ironically grim and subversive fall flat—it’s none of those things. The script isn’t sufficient even though the actors do try, but deep down I believe that it’s just not an appealing story. It’s a loathsome waste of cinema.

—#52—

THE PLEASURE GARDEN (1925). Starring Virginia Valli and Miles Mander. — This is the shortest of Hitchcock’s feature films. Even so, it’s still too long. A chorus line girl wants to get a better job—and she does! She marries one of her cabaret show’s producers and they travel to Italy for their honeymoon. Unknown to her, the husband keeps an island girl as a mistress. When his wife shows up it’s a horrible scrimble-scramble from one beach hut to another—there’s a sick friend, a safari-dressed-colonel, a drowning, an attempted stabbing, and a ghost, all in the last 15 minutes. It avails the film nothing. Except for Harry, Hitchcock would never go this low again. There is one aspect of the film I enjoyed, which is the radio headset the chorus girl’s father owns and listens to.

—#51—

MR. & MRS. SMITH (1941). Starring Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard. — A couple’s marriage in the town they were wed has been rendered null by redistricting. They quarrel after he doesn’t immediately agree to remarry. She revenge-dates his business partner, and in an attempt to return the favor he gets mixed up with lowbrow characters who give him terrible advice. Robert Montgomery, in one scene at a restaurant, affects goofy drunk reactions. The film continues in this manner for some time. There is a portion, right before the end sequences, that’s no so bad—the contrived antics let up just enough for a sliver of enjoyment, but it’s not enough. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is brain-irritation. The material (I don’t often give this opinion) has dated badly. The music is just as unhelpful, and the “sound design” slaps us with noxiously cutesy foley. The Awful Truth this is not…watch The Awful Truth, or My Man Godfrey, instead.

—#50—

MARNIE (1964). Starring Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, and Bruce Dern. — I really wish this film had succeeded, because the pairing of Sean Connery with Tippi Hedren is such a good one—an excellent next-generation Grant and Kelly. If only the plot continued its cat-thief caper story, and not veered into the worst kind of gothic romance. Marnie, you see, is not merely a compulsive thief, but she has to be lectured at every turn by those trying to do what’s best for her. You end up rooting for her, against them. There’s a thrilling horse chase sequence which, even with back projection, holds up. In the end, Marnie is taken back to confront her past. In its way, this sequence is quite harrowing, but what exactly are we to deduce? Troubled childhoods do not always create compulsive thieves, and we’re not presented with a good enough an exception. The first part is To Catch A Thief, the second is a twisty gothic romance in vibrant color, filled with jealousies and intrigue. The third part is a melodrama that doesn’t quite belong.

TIER 6.

WORKMANLIKE

—#49—

THE RING (1927). Starring Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, and Ian Hunter. — A young boxer is afraid to take on the big fish. His girl compels him to do so. The boxing sequences are kinetic. Hitch puts the camera directly in the opponent’s point-of-view and gets dynamic results…you the viewer are being “punched at” by the fighters. The plot is of no consequence but also unnecessarily complex, and there’s little visual stimulus outside the ring scenes. I tried refreshing my memory by reading the Wikipedia summary one day after seeing the movie, only to be further confused. This is the ‘shuffling around a lot’ type of silent film that is more reminiscent of 1915 than 1927. Not a good film.

—#48—

THE SKIN GAME (1931). Starring Edmund Gwenn, C.V. France, Helen Haye, and Jill Osmond. — The Skin Game involves two families who are already monetarily involved, and who are now after the same piece of property at an auction. The patriarch of the main family drives up the price, causing the buyer to pay nearly double the original price. The rest of the film revolves around the fallout of this event. There’s a subplot with one of the daughters who is treated cruelly by her lover, but I couldn’t really say if this had a larger significance. No definite recommendation as I am marking this film to re-watch at a later date, hopefully in restored form, but it appears to be a lesser effort.

—#47—

DOWNHILL (1927). Starring Ivor Novello, Robin Irvine, Isabel Jeans, and Sybil Rhoda. — Artistically, Downhill is on equal footing with The Lodger in terms of technical filmmaking. It’s a beautiful film. But the plot is an absolute snoozer. Characters are well drawn, but nothing interesting ever happens. It’s the “wrong man” plot again, this time done in a college setting with two students, one of whom is accused of the other’s misdeed. Not just melodramatic, but mellow-dramatic. It’s boring y’all, I’m sorry. Watch The Farmer’s Wife instead.

—#46—

TOPAZ (1969). Starring Frederick Stafford, John Forsythe, and Roscoe Lee Brown. — Topaz accomplishes a remarkable amount of plot as a globe-trotting spy adventure, but ends up with little to show for it. After some initial, windy introductions, we jet off to Revolution-fueled Cuba, where we doubt our hero’s (Frederick Stafford) loyalties. There’s a bit of intrigue with Roscoe Lee Brown who is the best character in the film. We meet our Castro lookalike. It is in his scenes that we see some of Hitchcock’s most fascinating camera work. Alas, the rest of the film’s intrigue is dreadfully boring. The scenes taking place outside are something to behold, almost like an epic. Then we return to those inner rooms where all the Le Carre stuff is hashed out with eye-blearing aplomb. In the end, you just want it to end as soon as possible, as Hitchcock did from this contract.

—#45—

CHAMPAGNE (1928). Starring Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, and Ferdinand von Alten. — Hitchcock’s Champagne finds an heiress goes on a whirlwind after fighting with her fiance. She meets him again at a party. Her father’s secret chaperone shows up many times, spooking the heiress. He’s there to make sure she doesn’t elope— but it all works out because the father approves anyhow. He only wanted to make sure the fiance wasn’t in it for the money. Someone asked Hitch during his masterclass for Family Plot if there was any film he could destroy if he had to— he named this one because, he said, they had to improvise so much of it. Well, that is not the issue at all. It’s just that the story is so very thin. Technique yes. Substance, none. Skip it.

—#44—

SECRET AGENT (1936). Starring John Gielgud, Petter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young. — Secret Agent, based on a book series by W. Somerset Maugham, features a young, very Sherlockian-looking John Gielgud. Peter Lorre plays another secret agent who gets very irritated by Gielgud’s too-goody-Britishism. Secret Agent’s most interesting scene is one that reminds us of the spinning top in Christopher Nolan’s Inception—here it’s a metal button spinning along the rim of a bowl. The dialogue is quite good. Realistic and witty, even the ‘nice’ characters can be punchy. A german grandmother, speaking perfect English herself, asks the American in her group to speak a little German. “Why, your pronunciation is just terrible,” she says sweetly. There are love scenes, but not the horrible melodramatic kind. Hitchcock’s lovers, when they are not sparring, are enjoying each other’s banter in a more congenial manner—as Lorre’s character puts it, “the morning husband and wife exercises.” The film is is at its best when the scenes are about the characters. The WWI plot is quite workaday, and the only point of interest are the world events that glide into that most famous biopic, made almost 30 years later, Lawrence of Arabia. Hitchcock’s Secret Agent is not one of the great ones, but it has its moments.

—#43—

NUMBER SEVENTEEN (1932). Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, and John Stuart. — Depending on how you count, Number Seventeen (sometimes Number 17) is Hitchcock’s seventeenth film. It’s also Hitch’s first train thriller. It begins very mysteriously indeed with two men meeting at a train station. One man is surprised by the other and falls down the stairs. Although this is meant to be comic, surprisingly, it doesn’t quite evoke that. The other man helps him and they bump into one of our two female characters. Soon there’s a gaggle of characters as two sets of gangsters show up, ready to make their escape with a precious item. There’s a lot of potential here, one of those stepping stones to better films. But there’s not quite enough to make, for instance, the train station plot interesting, especially. I wondered, “where did all that German expressionism go?” But the final train sequence, filled with fascinating special effects (it’s almost more interesting if you can tell how they did it). That’s when the imagery, the cutting, and the thrill of film composition kicks in, regardless of everything preceding. The character is now the film. It’s not good, but it contains the seeds of greatness.

—#42—

JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1930). Starring Sara Allgood, Edward Chapman, and Barry Fitzgerald. — Juno and the Paycock is an Irish film, and even in 1930 it does what a lot of Irish films do: it’s a family-and-friends drama. And it’s based on a play. Take those two things into account. It’s hard to tell if the acting and the script are exactly good or bad because the characters are so firmly stock. There are foreshadowings of The Trouble With Harry, believe it or not, with the proximity of violence to daily life (this is sometimes a gangsters-and-revolutionaries film), trying to put a fun face to death. But Juno’s final scene of emotion, genuine, in a moment of crisis of faith, elevates it to a stratosphere far above that other, godawful, film. This final scene alone makes it one of Hitchcock’s most powerful, if abrupt, endings.

—#41—

DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954). Starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. — This is undoubtedly the most controversial placement of a famous Hitchcock film in a ranked list. Dial M For Murder at #41, really?! Yes, as I believe it is only half the film it should be. Somewhere between the drawn-out buildup, similar to Strangers On a Train, and the final bit, the plot is completely useless. Grace Kelly is good, and some of the plot elements make out like this will be a real mystery, but then it all kind of just plops down and seeps out into a vague mess. It’s like an inferior episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which was just getting underway, and I wonder if Hitchcock lifted the idea out of the mix. It’s wonderfully filmed, of course, and I’m not blaming the stage play origins by any means. That said, it’s far from the worst, and it has a better consistency than the films already discussed in this list. It’s just under-developed and under-executed.

TIER 5.

WORTHWHILE

—#40—

THE FARMER’S WIFE (1927). Starring Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, and Gordon Harker. — An older man in disheveled clothing leaves the house and goes out to attend the livestock. He looks up at an open window, clearly disgruntled. A well-kempt man stands looking out at him stoically. Inside the room the well-kempt man and some servants stand around the bed of a young woman, clearly ill and near death. Is the well-kempt man the doctor? Is the disheveled man her grieving father? It’s a matter of ten precious minutes before we find out this film is, after all, a romantic comedy. The farmer (the well-kempt man) is looking for another wife after the passing of his first. He’s a bit like a British Jed Clampett, and the whole film sees him bouncing between visits with widowers, interviewing for a new wife. This is where all the comedy comes from as the candidates are very silly and put on lots of airs. The dialogue (in inter-title form) is occasionally hilarious, but mainly what you’d expect. I didn’t dislike The Farmer’s Wife. Or rather, I enjoyed the experience of watching it, while realizing what a terrible bore it is in great parts. It’s over two hours! This isn’t exactly DeMille-level spectacle—it’s very, very light material. Overall, I think it’s worth checking out for that silent film charm, but maybe put it on in the background. You won’t miss the narrative thread, I promise.

—#39—

BON VOYAGE / AVENTURE MALGACHE (1944). Starring John Blythe and Janique Joelle (Voyage). Starring Paul Bonifus, Paul Clarus, and Jean Dattas (Malgache). — Aventure Malgache is one of two films Hitchcock made in the French-language for the British Foreign Office. This one follows three men who recount their close calls as Resistance in Vichy Madagascar. It’s very Casablanca-like, in the best ways, involving mainly one police commissioner determined to prove Clarousse (the suspected leader of the resistance) to be a traitor and to win over the Vichy governor to his cause. It’s fairly light-hearted, but well acted and fun. I do recommend it along with the following Bon Voyage, a wonderful gem of a wartime spy thriller clocking in at 24 minutes, involving two Allied soldiers, one French the other Scottish. They burrow their way through treacherous Vichy France. There’s a lot of fun detail put into it, cigarettes being lit in cafes, accents, and not everything being as it seems.

—#38—

RICH AND STRANGE (1931). Starring Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, and Percy Marmont. — Coming after the talkies Blackmail, Juno and the Paycock, and Murder!, there’s an experimental quality to Rich and Strange (or East of Shanghai) which attempts to blend talkie with silent film tropes and styles. There’s a lot of the silent film visual poetry here: close-upe shots, unique angles, and fast-edits. A touch of German Expressionism, especially in the shots of the ship’s mechanical workings. The dialogue is of the less-is-more variety, which is fine by me. Sometimes talkies won’t shut up, so a little of the opposite in a sound film is nice, even if the results are somewhat uneven—for instance, why there are inter-titles? The plot plays out something like an Agatha Christie boat-drama without the mystery. A young married couple inherit money and go on a cruise that changes their lives. Romantic ups and downs, and a bit of disaster at the end keep things interesting (enough). I enjoyed it, and the final bits are quite redeeming. A strange Hitchcock film, but with its little riches.

—#37—

EASY VIRTUE (1928). Starring Isabel Jeans, Franklin Dyall, Robin Irvine, and Eric Bransby Williams. — Hitchcock has great sympathy for his heroines, especially in the early films. His scripts go to great lengths to prove their innocence when wrongly accused—a sort of ‘wrong man’ situation, but with different consequences. In this instance, we have an adapted Noel Coward play. Isabel Jean’s Larita is being divorced—an enormous scandal for the time. To recover her name, she travels, eventually falling in love again, and re-marrying, only to be found out by her snobbish in-laws. The material is not treated as drearily as all that sounds, for Hitchcock invents many wonderful flourishes to keep things going. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s surprisingly involving, and one of the stronger silent films Hitchcock made.

—#36—

FRENZY (1972). Starring Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey, and Alec McCowen. — When asked about the growing use of sexual content in films in the 60s and 70s, Hitchcock replied he didn’t need explicit content when he could accomplish the same with suggestion. And yet here we are. Check out the IMDB content rating if you need to. Frenzy is bitter in that raw ‘70s British way, but the bitterness is conveyed not by the filmmaker, but from the actors. Jon Finch’s Richard Blaney screams and glowers through the first half act, with his ex-wife in public, his employer, and generally makes himself unlikable except to a very few. When his ex-wife turns up dead, he is the natural and only suspect. Hitchcock makes you work hard for this setup. There’s a bizarre double-era feeling—although contemporaneously placed, certain scenes feel like they’re out of Conan Doyle’s London. Then we get a roadside diner that resembles a California truck stop. Then we jog over to the police inspector’s house which feels very French. Here I thought of the scenes in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge from two years prior. Played by Alec McCowen, the inspector has jailed who he believes is the killer, but something isn’t sitting right. His wife is no slouch at detection either, it turns out, and suggests to him multiple alternatives. As he listens he chokes down her horrible French cooking. I enjoyed the strange new tonalities this film took on, and the second half is worth it. It’s just that one scene which, even among 70s films, is quite disturbing.

—#35—

LIFEBOAT (1944). Starring Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix, and Hume Cronyn. — Whether you like this film, I think, comes down to whether you enjoy films that feel like stage plays. This script was written by John Steinbeck. The dialogue is almost a parody of Steinbeck-isms— characters who are hoping for something better, or who fall into hysterical delusions. It’s honestly not a good match for Hitch’s style. If you asked me to name the director of this film based on style, I’d have guessed Edward Dmytryk. It’s one of those films that doesn’t show you things but tells you they happened. It’s all a bit of much ado about nothing, but with fine actors doing interesting stuff. Watch it and see if you disagree.

—#34—

UNDER CAPRICORN (1949). Starring Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, and Michael Wilding. — Under Capricorn is beautiful in parts, and very strange. It takes place in Colonial Australia. The new governor arrives, and his nephew is with him, played by Michael Wilding. He befriends Joseph Cotten’s Sam Flusky, an emancipist, and soon recognizes Flusky and his wife (Ingrid Bergman) as childhood acquaintances from good old Ireland. Wilding falls in love with Bergman, Flusky is trusting, and there’s a lot more with hidden jealousies, politics, and Bergman’s inability to stay sober. This starts off like an epic, and indeed it shows many aspects of the founding of a nation, but puts it all into the drama of four characters and their driving motives—in that sense, it is quite intimate. Cotten plays a real cipher, and although he famously called this movie “crap” he gives a very solid and increasingly convincing performance (you have to believe his American accent is an Irish-American accent). I recommend it, despite some flaws, as a tangled web of internal intrigues. Hume Cronyn (from Cocoon), of all people, helped write the script. Hitchcock hired him as a friend, not realizing he had never written anything before.

—#33—

JAMAICA INN (1939). Starring Maureen O’Hara, Charles Laughton, Robert Newton, and Leslie Banks. — Underrated gem or deteriorating mess? Jamaica Inn is based on a story by Daphne du Maurier, with whose father Hitchcock was good friends. It stars a young Maureen O’Hara as the heroine and Leslie Banks as a Bill Sikes-type married to O’Hara’s sister. Charles Laughton plays a local grandee whose affiliation with the dreary and ill-reputed Jamaica Inn leads O’Hara down a road of thickly-spun twists amid some admittedly very Dickensian characters. The finale is quite fun insofar as it ditches the restraint of its 18th-century setting and swings into action, 39 Steps-style. The acting is melodramatic but not out of place. The gothic element is fun. It all depends on how you feel about watching a plot unfold that you can see coming miles ahead.

—#32—

I CONFESS (1953). Starring Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, and Karl Malden. — The suspense of I Confess, the dynamic, is set before clearly before us as we anticipate the inevitable falling out of a priest who hears a confession whose murderous contents he cannot divulge, and who is then blamed for the crime. Montgomery Clift plays the priest, and he is quite good. Of Hitch’s two ‘faith films’ I think it’s a lesser effort than The Wrong Man, whose accused character is also religious—but in that film we see the stations of his suffering: his arrest, interrogation, imprisoning, trial, the dissolving of family integrity, his doubts, and the breakdown of resoluteness until he utters one final prayer...all these add up to so much more. Nevertheless, I do recommend I Confess, whose plot may be lesser, but with many a fascinating twist and turn.

—#31—

THE PARADINE CASE (1947). Starring Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Alida Valli, Charles Laughton, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Coburn, and Louis Jourdan. — Fifteen years before Atticus Finch, Gregory Peck played this lawyer under Hitchcock. The film gives us a slew of really good performances: Louis Jourdan (future Bond-villain), Ann Todd, Alli Valdi, Charles Laughton, and Charles Coburn. It’s a solid work with many points of interest. Peck plays a star lawyer in England (with an American accent, but you buy it because he’s a baritone?). He’s hired to defend in the Paradine case—the young wife is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband. Louis Jourdan plays her presumed lover. Peck falls in love with the accused woman (he is married), compromising his objectivity. It’s not as melodramatic as I’ve made it seem, but it takes a number of cues from Rebecca, though not enough to be called an imitation. There’s a lot here to enjoy and explore. Charles Laughton, by the way, doesn’t have a huge role here bu makes quite an impression.

TIER 4.

UNDERRATED

—#30—

MURDER! / MARY (1931). Starring Herbert Marshall, Norah Baring, and Phyllis Konstam. — A most surprising and delightful film, brimming with interesting and unexpected moments. Hitchcock starts us off with the murder (spoilers), the trial and verdict, and then the film begins. It’s a fascinating construction. Specialized detectives can be annoying (insurance agents, professors, or scientists), but the detective in this film is unique: he is an actor-playwright. There’s some Beethoven, some Shakespeare, and a little circus to top it all off. I’ll leave the style, editing, script, and enjoyment to you, as I strongly recommend this hidden gem. Mary is the German-language version of Murder! Filmed with German actors, it was indeed directed by Hitchcock. The story is exactly the same, and the actors are about as good. The actress playing Mary is not quite as angelic as the English, but she still has that innocent sheen about her. I enjoyed watching this story again. It’s a bi-partite structure: in the first half Mary is put on trial and condemned to death. The second part has our hero-baron-playright-detective spring into action on her behalf. He devises a method for trapping the suspected murderer. It doesn’t quite pan out— the murderer plays it cool. It is worth watching, but you can just watch the English version, there’s nothing extra here.

—#29—

THE MANXMAN (1929). Starring Carl Brisson, Anny Ondra, and Malcolm Keen. — This is one of Hitch’s most visually dynamic silent films, and perhaps goes a little further up the list in his filmography. In contrast with The Ring, the style is compelling—we are introduced to two boyhood friends, one a rich type, the other a dockman, played respectively by Malcolm Keen and Carl Brisson. They stand on the docks, the former being slightly prissy and the latter laughing him off. We know exactly where we are in their friendship. They’re surrounded by other dock workers and as Brisson’s dockman greets his girlfriend from one end of the crowd, Keen’s boss-type looks on, but calls to his friend as if to win him back—this is cut across the crowd— the scene teems with life and vivaciousness. Other choices— the kinds of faces shown, the flipping through books, the strange pauses in certain scenes— all lend such an interesting atmosphere. Jealousy grows between the friends. It’s a full romantic saga of love— it takes its time, but with much to say. Perhaps the most underrated of all his films, even though it is just a touch long.

—#28—

WALTZES FROM VIENNA (1934). Starring Esmond Knight, Edmund Gwenn, Faye Compton, and Jessi Matthews. — I didn’t expect from Hitchcock something this sweet and tuneful. I can see why he felt it was a low ebb for him, but for me it was a nice surprise. The story concerns the Strausses of Vienna, the composer family of father and sons. Strauss Sr is an incredibly dominant and jealous composer, wary of his talented son’s star outshining his own. Johann Jr is a very affable type, and this film is not any sort of deep character study, but it’s set up like most musicals where you have character types playing their parts, and at the end there’s reconciliation. I’ve long known about the Strauss story— in fact this film tones it down. The outright hatred of the real father and his older brothers of Junior’s successes included burning many of his manuscripts. Well, this movie is not that harsh, but it gives you just enough to make a real obstacle out of it. I recommend this one, although many will find it too much about a piece of music and out of reach of their sympathies. I hope this film receives a proper restoration and new life on bluray. It does not deserve to be buried like this. For a certain audience it has a lot to offer.

—#27—

SABOTEUR (1942). Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, and Otto Kruger. — It hadn’t been that long since Sabotage— six years, but this one shares the same chase-’em-to-the-end breathlessness, updating the previous film with a 39 Steps-esque battle-axe romance, and a finale set atop a national landmark. Secret societies, a circus car, and heartless villains—it’s classic stuff. It may not be his most original plot, but the settings are, the acting is fine, and sometimes the remix is just as good. One of Hitch’s most underrated.

—#26—

SUSPICION (1941). Starring Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant, Cedric Hardwicke, Dame May Whitty, and Nigel Bruce. — I watched this film and thought it pretty mediocre. Until, as the day passed, I realized the impact it left with those closing scenes. This film explores another Hitchcock motif—the paranoid suspicion that someone close to you is not who they seem. It shows up plenty in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but this film is the most potent version. Cary Grant romances and marries Joan Fontaine who, at first, is quite resistant to his charms. Finally, she begins to suspect malice, and the film builds up wonderfully. We get two classic scenes— one wherein Grant gives her a glass of milk, and the glass glows in the dark lit room. Then, one of the most frightening car ride sequences I’ve seen, only to stop suddenly as our characters reconcile and return home. As you may suspect from that description, Fontaine’s paranoia was unfounded. This is a must-watch.

—#25—

TORN CURTAIN (1966). Starring Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Lila Kedrova, and Hansjorg Felmy. — This ended up being one of my favorite Hitch thrillers. It’s reminiscent of his early thrillers, but different in that it goes into the belly of the beast. Paul Newman and Julie Andrews are great. Hitch himself disliked the whole project, but then again The Trouble With Harry was one of his personal favorites. Let this be a lesson in always listening to the director. This is an excellent, cut-above, thriller. I’d say the first third is somewhat ho-hum, but once things take off, they really take off. There’s a good death scene (I promise I don’t say that often) quite unlike any other in this kind of movie. A hidden gem.

TIER 3.

OVERRATED

By overrated I do not mean that these films are horrible or should be any lower in any ranking—but they are among Hitch's most watched, and therefore overrated by pure rate-of-sample...and, I think, not his very best but still classic and essential.

—#24—

THE BIRDS (1963). Starring Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, and Jessica Cartwright. — The film tiptoes along the entire way, neither giving us a full sidestory romance nor a full creature feature, nor resolving the slew of questions it raises. The narrative, like Tippi Hedren, keeps its cool. There’s the bizarre family dynamic of Jessica Tandy (mother), Rod Taylor (son), and Veronica Cartwright (young daughter). When Hedren appears, the mother has a witchy air about her...until we learn it is Hedren who is the presumed ill omen in the town. None of it is explored in depth— nobody quite believes their own theory, everything’s up in the air. Again, when sparks appear between Hedren and Taylor it’s much like the classic Cary Grant and Grace Kelly dynamic— will they, won’t they finally end up together? So, on the one hand a classic caper romance...on the other, a Psycho-like setup with an ill omened stranger. Then there are the birds. They seem less like the feature and more the interrupters of drama. Tandy suspects Hedren even without the bird omen. But they do present moments of real terror— heads attacked, eyes pecked out...their threat fills the air as the bayside village takes cover from dense flocks of destruction. The moment in the diner is interesting. Who is the Jonah to be tossed overboard? And then the whole threat disappears. The birds fly off, leaving crashed cars and dead bodies, but also a strange quietude. Then again, the destruction was mostly panic. Is this the core of the mystery?

—#23—

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940). Starring Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, and George Sanders. — A decent amount of interest builds in Foreign Correspondent in the first third, and the last third picks it up again, but the middle feels like going through the motions. Joel McCrea starts off as our American hero, but when its apparent Hitchcock doesn’t know how to make him cool, British secondary Herbert Marshall, who played our hero in 1930’s Murder!, suddenly takes the lead temporarily. Any thriller coming on the heels of Blackmail, Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the first one), The 39 Steps, Young & Innocent, and especially The Lady Vanishes has a lot to prove. Correspondent gets by, then finishes strong with a spectacular sendoff. But the real zest is in the iconic camerawork. When it’s rated, it’s a bit overrated, but I wouldn’t ever dismiss it.

—#22—

TO CATCH A THIEF (1955). Starring Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, and John Williams. — This is a gorgeous film, and quite a delight. I almost hate to review it because I think it’s an inferior precedent to 1963’s Charade, directed by Stanley Donen with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. But still, the locales, the color, Grace Kelly, and especially the climax on the rooftops and the masked ball are all wonderful. I don’t think I have much more to say though— it’s one of those romantic-caper-cat-thief-criminal things, and it does what it does. It’s a lovely film, and I wouldn’t dare take it down a notch, but Hitch was capable of being much more interesting, and Charade takes this plot and makes the best version of it possible.

—#21—

VERTIGO (1958). Starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Raymond Bailey. — Oft cited as the best film ever made, I had no doubt Hitchcock could pull it off. Rear Window, Strangers On a Train, and Shadow of A Doubt are three of the greatest already. Vertigo, for me, is not in that group. Technically it’s wondrous, and the performances good, and I can appreciate the meticulously-designed art direction, giving us clues about the dreamworld we’re inhabiting. The psychology is less heavy-handed than in Psycho, perhaps even insightful as a cinematic malady. But any kind of familiar sympathy is completely absent. The film’s conclusion contains a staging/choreographic error which I find unbelievable (and accidentally comical), and the ending feels flat-footed. When I hear people talk about Vertigo in rapturous tones I’m tempted to believe they’re actually talking about Rear Window.

TIER 2.

GREAT FILMS

—#20—

SABOTAGE (1936). Starring Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester, and John Loder. — This is a strange one, and one of the best of the early films. It stars Sylvia Sidney, a wonderful actress who starred with Bogart and Joel McCrea the next year in the wonderful film Dead End (1937), directed by William Wyler. Here she plays the wife of Oscar Homolka, a cinema owner who is secretly a terrorist for anarchist causes. There are a few plot intricacies, but not too many, and Homolka’s character Verloc plants a bomb scheduled to go off, hidden in a birdcage carried by a young boy. This film is fairly violent and shocking for its time. The film is much less mystery and really a crime drama. The suspense is deadly. Also interesting for how Hitchcock portrays and exculpates his heroine, a theme I alluded to earlier about Easy Virtue, and which is also true about Blackmail and Murder!

—#19—

BLACKMAIL (1929/1930). Starring Annie Ondra, John Longden, and Sara Allgood. — (1930 Sound Version). A woman, Alice, is nearly raped in the apartment of an artist who has lured her there. She stabs him and flees. Her boyfriend Frank, a detective on the police force, is assigned the case of the murdered artist. When Frank finds a familiar glove a neighbor appears and blackmails them—he has the other glove. If you can’t see where the plot heads from here, thank goodness, because it’s worth watching. This is a remarkable ‘first’ in many ways, and it’s the blueprint for much to come. Ultimately, a very strong entry not to be missed, superseded but not necessarily overthrown from its place of glory. The 1929 Silent Version was the original version before the production switched gears and became the first ever British sound film. The silent version feels milder, but the action is clear cut and the acting very good.

—#18—

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934). Starring Petter Lorre, Leslie Banks, Edna Best, and Nova Pilbeam. — Peter Lorre, before being famous for playing second fiddle in Bogart films, was a lead actor, mostly playing ne’er-do-wells, or fiery zealots. This film does feature zealots, or cultists, in one of the most interesting secret society scenes in all of early film. On revisiting the plot of this earlier iteration, I notice how much really is similar to the second iteration. Except, I would say, this one is a little darker, more film noir, than adventurous. The ending is one of those classic “well, now that the action’s done, let’s fade to credits.” Still, a strong entry in the Hitchcock oeuvre which you shouldn’t miss.

—#17—

THE 39 STEPS (1935). Starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, and Peggy Ashcroft. — I have it on excellent authority that this film is no good if you want to know what happens in the book. Loose adaptation, but a fun thriller. Our hero, handcuffed to the heroine, is the Hitchcockian constant ‘wrong men’ story. I’ve found that the acting in nearly all the early Hitchcock films is excellent, and Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll are one of the most vivacious of Hitchcock’s accidental couples. What is perhaps most interesting about this film is the cinematography as our heroes are running on foot across the Scottish moorlands. There’s always great countryside in Hitchcock, but here he manages to film it like it was a dark alleyway. It’s quite chilling, in a delicious way.

—#16—

ROPE (1948). Starring James Stewart, John Dall, and Farley Granger. — Rope opens with a murder—we see it happen, we see where the body is hidden, we hear all the machinations of the two perpetrators as they scheme their vile dinner party. Only one question remains—will they be discovered? All this in the first ten minutes. Some fascinating themes pop up—college-educated intellectualism skewed into class prejudice. Is Hitchcock being too coy, or is he exposing how little it takes for some people to become monsters? Jimmy Stewart and Farley Granger give good performances here, but the whole film really depends on stage actor John Dall, in whom these callous evils are personified. I will say that, although Hitchcock’s “humorous corpse” gag—evidenced in many an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in this film, and especially The Trouble With Harry—although I find the gag to be without merit, in this film it works. Watch to find out why it’s one of his best.

—#15—

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959). Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. — No review is really necessary here. This film needs to apologia, no explanation, no summary, and really it’s pointless to recommend it— except for right now. The thrills are real. The dialogue is superb. We never see Eva Marie Saint again in a Hitchcock film, but she’s luminous here. Yes, the first James Bond films used North by Northwest as a template. A sound decision. Cary Grant is a very talkative hero, bubbling with the best kind of witty lines. I said of To Catch A Thief that it was outdone by Charade. But North By Northwest has rarely been bettered.

—#14—

REBECCA (1940). Starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, George Sanders, and Nigel Bruce. — A strangeness permeates the screen as the camera wobbles artistically, winding us up a shaded road in the middle of the night. We see the setting for our gothic drama--a great house with spires and chiaroscuro windows. A man stands over a cliffside and a young woman startles him from his reverie. They get married before too long and go to live in the great house. Then we get a long adagio of mounting tensions, psychological intonations, and visitors to the house, insinuating strange things. All this is incredibly dream-like and Rebecca indeed has the best gothic melodramatics I’ve ever watched—a masterpiece of mood. It gives us half-lit revelations...we think we know what the film wants us to know, until our knowledge is upended. Rebecca is frankly much better than it has a right to be—in most other directorial hands the material would have dated badly.

TIER 3.

ENTHUSIASTIC

These are the films which really took hold and made me forget everything except the story being told. A *tiny* bit of fudging here as I don't think many would consider two of them to be top tier, but so enjoyable were they that I have no qualms putting them this high.

—#13—

FAMILY PLOT (1976). Starring Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, and William Devane. — Hitch’s last film, and possibly his most under-appreciated, Family Plot is a light-hearted caper. This film is my evidence against anyone who (in case they exist) might defend Harry for being lighthearted. Hitch most definitely could do lighthearted macabre. The story involves a phony psychic and her too-willing partner-in-crime cab-driver boyfriend, as they are fooling an old dowager with psychic mumbo-jumbo just long enough to discover the name of her lost heir. Do they want to disenfranchise her or the heir? No! They just want to be paid after he’s found—that’s it! But, things escalate. Family Plot has a delightful ease about it. There are many standout sequences. The action is some of the most intense and real Hitchcock ever shot. It’s as breezily American as Frenzy is darkly British. I also recommend Hitchcock’s masterclass on the film from the same year, available on YouTube, featuring two certain film critics calling in from Chicago. Oh, and John Williams wrote a beautiful sparkling, jazz-infused score for the movie. Delight.

—#12—

YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937). Starring Nova Pilbeam, Derrick De Marney, Percy Marmont, and John Longden. — Another surprise gem! In the make of 39 Steps, we now have a young actor wrongly accused of murder, who is helped by a police chief’s daughter to hide away and escape. Plenty of moments of witty comedy and side adventures before tracking to find the real killer. Nova Pilbeam is back as a very young leading lady. Watch The 39 Steps and then this one, for they make a fine, contrasting pair of thrillers.

—#11—

PSYCHO (1960). Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, Vera Miles, and John Gavin. — I recently watched the 1983 studio sequel, Psycho II. While it has its merits, it highlights what a different kind of film the original Psycho is. The stakes are always internal—Janet Leigh’s character must decide to finally return the money. Superficially, she doesn’t succeed—I probably don’t have to explain what happens in the famous shower scene—but at the moment of her internal, spiritual redemption (baptism imagery, anyone?) she becomes useless to the film. The film doesn’t exculpate Norman Bates, unlike the sequels. He’s a head case to be sure, but it wasn’t his mother telling him to do bad things inside his head—it was his own psyche using his mother’s memory, or a false mother, in order to exculpate his conscience. This is a terrible review, and I apologize—but that’s what I got after seeing Psycho II.

—#10—

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (1927). Starring Ivor Novello, June Tripp, Malcolm Keen, Marie Ault, and Arthur Chesney. — The actors purse their lips in that doll-like manner—the makeup, the furrowed brows...everything silent film is present. And so are the origins of Hitchcock’s Wrong Man Thesis. The only immediate detraction, technically, is that I did get the two young male lead roles mixed up. They are very similar in appearance. Is this a narrative trick or just gross incompetence on my perceptive powers? Ivor Novello is magnetic as the title character. Believing him to be the Jack-the-Ripper from the newspapers, his hosts await the inevitable revelation. Daisy in the meantime, played by June Tripp, falls for him. If you only watch one silent Hitchcock, this is the one you should see. It’s somber but engaging and poetic. This is sometimes a slow film, but the gradual progression towards tragedy keeps you hooked.

—#9—

SPELLBOUND (1947). Starring Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Leo G. Carroll. — Spellbound is a wonderful film, filled with freudian psycho-babble, true, but cinematic psycho-babble that leads us through a genuinely interesting journey, and to a great conclusion. One of the strongest endings Hitch ever did. Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck make a wonderful tragic pair of lovers, she helping him and he showing a lot more range than in other films. One of Peck’s finest performances. Bergman is actually underrated, I realized. She carries the film with more than just her beauty. She has a Bogart-like quality, knowing just how to counterbalance her co-star with tact and grace. Despite its ‘clinical’ subject matter, this is a very warm film with room for glowing humor and fun.

—#8—

STAGE FRIGHT (1950). Starring Jane Wyman, Michael Wilding, and Marlene Dietrich. — The beauty of Stage Fright’s plot is not any grand scope, but all the interesting little steps along the way, twisting into neat corners that absolutely must eventually be resolved. Jane Wyman, whether she’s affecting an English accent or using her natural American accent, is wonderful. She plays an American studying acting in London. She’s in love with the same man as another actress, a big star played by Marlene Dietrich. A murder happens, a man is accused, and Wyman gets mixed up in the world of police, amateur sleuthing, and blackmailers. Her for-some-reason equally gregarious father, played by Alistair Sim, also gets involved. I’m not a big fan of his, but at least he’s interesting to watch. The tangled web of Stage Fright is one of Hitch’s very greatest. What seems merely confused in Vertigo here becomes interesting, Shakespearean double-roles with unintended consequences. In stupid movies this is only used comedically, but here we’re given savory intrigue.

—#7—

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956). Starring James Stewart, Doris Day, and Christopher Olsen. — In 1956 Hitchcock released two incredible films, one is The Wrong Man, and the other is this Indiana Jones-level adventure, a remake of his 1934 plot, extended across the globe. Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day are the too-suspicious and too-trusting travelers who meet with an international conspiracy. The plot intertwines so well that I’ve rarely felt so invested in a plot for its own sake, even though I knew it from the other film already! Gold standard.

—#6—

THE WRONG MAN (1956). Starring Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, and Anthony Quayle. — Although The Wrong Man indicates a too-familiar theme, the venture feels completely different from the usual—not just the other ‘wrong man’ films, but nearly all his films to this point. For one thing, it’s the most human of his films. I offer a theory. Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped was released the same year, and this film, in its quietude, its little desperations, seems drawn from the same well. I have no evidence of connection except the films themselves—regular men of faith who, intensely persecuted, keep quietly and steadily on. Henry Fonda is superb as a family man, a musician, accused of murder because he looks like the killer. The film explores an aspect rarely done, namely the psychological effect of the trial on the spouse. The road to recovery doesn’t end with acquittal. Maybe Hitch never saw a Bresson film, but regardless The Wrong Man achieves the same quiet, dramatic, power as that of the French filmmaker.

—#5—

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951). Starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, and Patricia Hitchcock. — Hitchcock worked with some of the greatest writers of all time, whether adapting Daphne du Maurier, or enlisting no less than John Steinbeck, Thornton Wilder, and many others. Strangers On A Train was penned by Patricia Highsmith, and the script is one of the tightest of all his films. So much is iconic: the psychotic antagonist played by Robert Walker (a glimpse of Norman), Farley Granger’s innocent-but-compromised protagonist, playing along to get rid of his tormentor; the double-murder plot; and the whirlwind climax at the carousel. I hate to be so brief, but this really is one of the best ones—heart-pounding—so please, get ready to stop reading and go see it!

—#4—

THE LADY VANISHES (1938). Starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Lukas, and Dame May Whitty. — Of all his films up through 1939, the summation of Hitchcock’s skill so far is poured into this, his most exciting film yet (again, chronologically). It has the romantic angle, played hilarious between Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood. Redgrave is infuriatingly funny as a rowdy composer/musician who brings in the locals to his upstairs hotel room to record their folk songs. If you know a little about the folk-music gathering types, this over-the-top nose-tweak at their ilk will be delicious. Well, that’s not the plot at all! That’s just how the cute-meet happens, but as we progress towards the mystery, Christie-esque, on the train, we learn that the musician can be a good fellow after all. The story is based on Ethel Lina White’s story “The Wheel Spins.” Margaret Lockwood meets an old spinster, Dame May Whitty, who, as the title announces, vanishes. Nobody has ever seen or met her before. I can’t say more, but it’s pure gold. Hitch’s most perfect?

—#3—

NOTORIOUS (1946). Starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Raines. — Claude Rains is the obvious star performance here. Is there a way to describe this film in a meaningful way without ruining the experience of watching it? Ingrid Bergman plays a naturalized citizen who is recruited by Cary Grant’s Devlin. The mission is go to Brazil and infiltrate a Nazi ring. The first act includes a whirlwind romance and just a tad of slowness before we get to Brazil, which to me is what makes this film not just great, but perfect. Is the final scene, a wonderful one full of tension, enough? I wanted more. This is cinema at its greatest, with three great performances in a tightly-controlled thriller. I’m running out of superlatives. Perhaps my only recommendation is to see a few other Hitchcock films first, probably the other Cary Grant team-ups.

—#2—

REAR WINDOW (1954). Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr, and Thelma Ritter. — The film starts lazily, moodily, as James Stewart, a photographer who is temporarily wheelchair-bound, begins obsessing over his neighbors through their windows. Grace Kelly is his too-good-to-be-true girlfriend. They bicker about exactly that until they move on to his newest hobby—spying on people’s lives. They bicker, he naps, and she brings him take-out. The plot simmers in the background. Then they are startled, and being to attempt a series of proofs, investigating one of the opposite apartments. The central mystery is very wonderful and not at all a sidebar to the main characters and their interactions, proving you can in fact have your cake and eat it, too. What else should I say? It’s the best kind of Hitchcock. Sometimes I fear being reactionary, as with Vertigo. But often enough popular opinion gets it exactly right.

—#1—

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943). Starring Joseph Cotten, Theresa Wright, Wallace Ford, and Hume Cronyn. — Joseph Cotten’s Charley wakes in darkened apartment. He descends the apartment steps and leaves town. We cut to his sister’s family, including another Charley, this one his niece, played by Theresa Wright who carries this film in tandem. Cotten is superb, but if the combination of bravado and vulnerability in the young lady wasn’t real enough, no dice. She’s exasperated, sick of rural life and a big-city-wannabe. When Uncle Charley shows up he’s the model of rarified urbanity, delighting the family with his tales, and she falls under his spell. I do not rule out an attraction, though composed of admiration and imitation. But as our knowledge of Cotten’s Charley grows, we feel the quiet, unnamed dread coming upon us as the younger Charley must make her final decision. Shadow of a Doubt relies on our understanding of the internal thoughts of people—and it is the greatest testament to Hitchcock’s psychological acuity that he was able to translate Thornton Wilder’s masterful script onto the screen, his greatest achievement, and also his personal favorite of all his films.