Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was an English film director and producer. He is one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. Known as “the Master of Suspense”, he directed over 50 feature films in a career spanning six decades, becoming as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing of the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965). His films garnered a total of 46 Oscar nominations and six wins.
Born in Leytonstone, Essex, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer after training as a technical clerk and copy writer for a telegraph-cable company. He made his directorial debut with the silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925), with Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty. His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) – with Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June Tripp, Malcolm Keen and Ivor Novello; helped to shape the thriller genre. Other silent films include The Ring (1927), with Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, and Ian Hunter; Downhill (1927), with Ivor Novello, Robin Irvine, Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter, and Violet Farebrother; The Farmer’s Wife (1928), with Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, and Gordon Harker; Easy Virtue (1928), with Jeans, Franklin Dyall, Eric Bransby Williams, and Hunter; Champagne (1928), and with Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, Gordon Harker, and Ferdinand von Alten; and The Manxman (1929), with Carl Brisson, Malcolm Keen, and Anny Ondra. His first sound picture Blackmail (1929) – with Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard; is often cited as the first “talkie” in British cinema.
Films of the early 1930s include Juno and the Paycock (1930), with Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O’Neill, Edward Chapman, and Sara Allgood; Murder! (1930), with Herbert Marshall, Norah Baring, and Edward Chapman; Elstree Calling (1930), with Tommy Handley, Helen Burnell, and Donald Calthrop; The Skin Game (1931), with Edmund Gwenn, Helen Haye, C.V. France, Jill Esmond, John Longden, and Phyllis Konstam; Mary (1931): with Alfred Abel and Olga Tschechowa; Rich and Strange (1931), with Henry Kendall and Joan Barry; Number Seventeen (1932), with John Stuart, Anne Grey, Leon M. Lion, Donald Calthrop, Barry Jones, and Ann Casson; Waltzes from Vienna (1934), with Esmond Knight, Jessie Matthews, Gwenn, and Fay Compton; and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), with Leslie Banks, Edna Best, and Peter Lorre.
Films in the mid to late 1930s include The 39 Steps (1935), with Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, and Godfrey Tearle; Secret Agent (1936), with Madeleine Carroll, Lorre, John Gielgud, and Robert Young; Sabotage (1936), with Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, and John Loder; Young and Innocent (1937), with Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney; The Lady Vanishes (1938), with Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, and May Whitty; Jamaica Inn (1939), with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara.
By 1939 Hitchcock was a filmmaker of international importance, and film producer David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films followed, including Rebecca (1940), with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, George Sanders, Reginald Denny, Gladys Cooper, and C. Aubrey Smith; Foreign Correspondent (1940), with Joel McRea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Basserman, Robert Benchley, and Edmund Gwenn; Suspicion (1941), with Cary Grant, Fontaine (who won an Academy Award for Best Actress), Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, and Leo G. Carroll; Saboteur (1942), with Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, and Norman Lloyd; Shadow of a Doubt (1943), with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten; and Notorious (1946), with Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains. Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture, although Hitchcock himself was only nominated as Best Director. he was also nominated for Lifeboat (1944) Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee; and Spellbound (1945), with Gregory Peck, Bergman, and Michael Chekhov; Rear Window (1954), with James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr; and Psycho (1960), with Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, and Janet Leigh.
Other notable films include Rope (1948), with Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Joan Chandler, Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, and Edith Evanson; Stage Fright (1950), with Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding and Richard Todd; Strangers on a Train (1951), with Granger, Ruth Roman, and Robert Walker; Dial M For Murder (1954), with Ray Milland, Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams; To Catch a Thief (1955), with Grant, Kelly, Williams, Charles Vanel, and Brigitte Auber; The Trouble with Harry (1955), with Gwenn, John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Mildred Natwick, Mildred Dunnock, Jerry Mathers, and Royal Dano; Vertigo (1958), with Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones; North by Northwest (1959), with Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason; The Birds (1963), with Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, and Suzanne Pleshette; Marnie (1964), with Hedren and Sean Connery; and Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews; Topaz (1969), with Frederick Stafford, Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor, Claude Jade, Michel Subor, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Forsythe; Frenzy (1972), with Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins, and Vivien Merchant; and Family Plot (1976), with Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, and William Devane.
The “Hitchcockian” style includes the use of camera movement to mimic a person’s gaze, thereby turning viewers into voyeurs, and framing shots to maximise anxiety and fear. The film critic Robin Wood wrote that the meaning of a Hitchcock film “is there in the method, in the progression from shot to shot. A Hitchcock film is an organism, with the whole implied in every detail and every detail related to the whole.”
In 2012, Vertigo replaced Orson Welles‘s Citizen Kane (1941) as the British Film Institute’s greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics. By 2018 eight of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, including his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979 and was knighted in December that year, four months before he died. Each review will be linked to the title below. (*seen originally in theaters) (**seen rereleased in theaters)
- Number 13 (1922) – silent, unfinished, lost
- Always Tell Your Wife (1923) – silent short, uncredited co-director, partially lost
- The Pleasure Garden (1925) – silent
- The Mountain Eagle (1926) – silent, lost
- The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) – silent
- The Ring (1927) – silent
- Downhill (1927) silent
- The Farmer’s Wife (1928) – silent
- Easy Virtue (1928) – silent
- Champagne (1928) – silent
- The Manxman (1929) – silent
- Blackmail (1929)
- Juno and the Paycock (1930)
- Murder! (1930)
- Elstree Calling (1930)
- The Skin Game (1931)
- Mary (1931)
- Rich and Strange (1931)
- Number Seventeen (1932)
- Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
- The 39 Steps (1935)
- Secret Agent (1936)
- Sabotage (1936)
- Young and Innocent (1937)
- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
- The Jamaica Inn (1939)
- Rebecca (1940)
- Foreign Correspondent (1940)
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)
- Suspicion (1941)
- Saboteur (1942)
- Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
- Lifeboat (1944)
- Adventure Malgache (1944) – documentary short
- Bon Voyage (1944) – documentary short
- Spellbound (1945)
- Notorious (1946)
- The Paradine Case (1947)
- Rope (1948)
- Under Capricorn (1949)
- Stage Fright (1950)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- I Confess (1953)
- 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)
- The Wrong Man (1956)
- Vertigo (1958)
- North by Northwest (1959)
- Psycho (1960)**
- The Birds (1963)**
- Marine (1964)
- Tom Curtain (1966)
- Topaz (1969)
- Frenzy (1972)
- Family Plot (1976)
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