Self-serving thread ahead...

Any of you folks Alfred Hitchcock fans? I sure hope so. Best director ever. Amazing films. Wonderful work.

Did you know Alfred Hitchcock was a silent film director? That he was one of England's best directors before defecting to Hollywood? That he directed what is considered Europe's first EVER sound film after The Jazz Singer in America? That ALFRED HITCHCOCK ROCKS?

Here's the self-serving part. A collaborator and I have been working on a year-long, every-goddamn-film Alfred Hitchcock project throughout 2006, the gist being that we watch a Hitchcock film a week, every week, in chronological order, and write essays about his growth as an artist, his artistic development, his films, and all the other good fun that comes with tracking the career of a great artist who did 50 years of great work in the course of a single year.

We're actually a lot further along than you'd imagine, too. First week of January, we did the first film of his that is available on DVD, The Lodger (his first overall, The Pleasure Garden, is available on bootleg only, and his second, The Mountain Eagle, is lost to time, destroyed).

So, the films so far - these images are links (comments welcome) ...

Week 1 – The Lodger


Week 2 – The Ring


Week 3 - Champagne


Week 4 – Easy Virtue


Week 5 – The Farmer’s Wife


Week 6 – The Manxman


Week 7 - Blackmail

Moving out of the silent film era and into the talkies ...

Week 8 – Juno And The Paycock


Week 9 – Murder!


Week 10 – The Skin Game


Week 11 – Rich And Strange


Week 12 – Number Seventeen

Into his great British work and through the British era ...

Week 13 - The Man Who Knew Too Much


Week 14 - The 13 Steps


Week 15 - Secret Agent


Week 16 - Sabotage


Week 17 – Young And Innocent


Week 18 – The Lady Vanishes


Week 19 – Jamaica Inn

And then his wonderful early American period...

[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/06-06/hitch20.php]Week 20 - Rebecca
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/06-06/hitch21.php]Week 21 - Foreign Correspondent
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/06-06/hitch22.php]Week 22 - Mr. & Mrs. Smith
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/06-06/hitch23.php]Week 23 - Suspicion
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Into his period of early American greatness, with some great classics ...

[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/06-06/hitch24.php]Week 24 - Saboteur
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/07-06/hitch25.php]Week 25 - Shadow Of A Doubt
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/07-06/hitch26.php]Week 26 -Lifeboat
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/07-06/hitch27.php]Week 27 - Spellbound
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And we jump into the color era!

[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/07-06/hitch28.php]Week 28 - Notorious
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/08-06/hitch29.php]Week 29 - The Paradine Case
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/08-06/hitch30.php]Week 30 - Rope
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/08-06/hitch31.php]Week 31 - Under Capricorn
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/08-06/hitch32.php]Week 32 - Stage Fright
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[url=http://www.dvdinmypants.com/features/08-06/hitch33.php]Week 33 - Strangers On A Train
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And that's up to current. The weekly series hits every Thursday at dvdinmypants.com. And as any Hitchcock fans knows, all the best films are yet to come. Read long, watch along, and comment. Thanks!

I'm a fan of his work.
My favorites are West by North-West & The Birds.

The 39 Steps is one of my favorite movies of all time. Alfred Hitchcock taught me a lot about how to tell a story.

Imagine what he could do with computer generated cinema.

BTW, Eric, you're short a few steps.

They filmed "I Confess" around where I live,and my grandfather was an extra in it.Or at least he said he was..cause I've never seen him in it

"Fan" might be a little strong, but I do enjoy his work.

I went through a big Hitchcock phase in high school and then another one shortly after graduating college. I've seen a good share of his films from the 40's and 50's, but nothing earlier than REBECCA.


Oh, come now! Hitchcock's toward the top of the list, but I wouldn't call him the best. I think that there a few better ones. John Ford, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles come immediately to mind. David Lean is arguably better, too. Of course, I realize that it's all subjective.


No argument there.


Actually - no, I didn't. I guess I just assumed that he started in the early sound era. I hadn't heard of any Hitchcock silents.

Ya learn something every day!


Well, I knew that he had made some movies in England before he hit it big here. I don't know the details, though.


No, I didn't. Now, THAT's cool.

Was the sound done the same way as in JAZZ SINGER - with a phonograph recording playing along with the film?


Just don't step on his blue suede shoes!

Sounds like a fun and interesting project, Eric! Looks like you still have a ways to go, too.

Maybe they only watched 1/3 of the film!

No, he's selfish in the sack.

Rebecca was his first work as an American director, so anything earlier than that would be his British work. About 23 films, I think. Most consider The 39 Steps as his best from that period, though I tend to favor The Lady Vanishes. If you like silents, The Lodger is bloody brilliant (though almost all prints look like total hell). His British stuff is dirt cheap to buy. If you see one of those "10 films for $20!" sets from Brentwood, go for it. Great bang for your buck.


I'd make that argument, yes. For 50 years he consistently created exceptional films, constantly adapting to changing times and changing technology, keeping himself among the top tier of directors from era to era to era. His heights of quality – Vertigo, Rear Window and others – can stand up to almost anything you throw at them, and in terms of sheer quantity, I don't know of many others with as many winners in their filmography as Hitchcock. You could make a top 10 list of Hitch films populated by nothing but five-star movies. How many other guys can you say that about?

John Ford would be right up there on the quantity and longevity front. He was good for decades, consistent year in and year out, rarely anything less than very strong. LOTS of great stuff on his resume. I don't know if his very best matches up with Hitchcock's very best, though.

Welles was flat-out brilliant, but we'll never know how good be could have been because the studios tore his films apart. His heights are astounding, some of cinema's best, but his filmography is tragically short. A handful of winners and some filler. Kubrick fares better in that regard, and his best is AMAZING. It's hard to approach the perfection of something like 2001. But I'd still pick Hitchcock over him. I love David Lean, I'm a big fan and rank Lawrence Of Arabia as probably my favorite film, but really his brief spike of greatness defines his whole career. Too small a handful, in my opinion.

The guy who springs to mind as far as having been a relevant director over the course of a very long period of time, who has a long list of bona fide classics and critically acclaimed works, and who reaches dizzying heights of greatness is Akira Kurosawa. Amazing, amazing body of work.

Obviously though, yeah, this is subjective stuff. One could make the case that Kubrick's best is SO good it trumps all else, for instance, or that Ford was so influential he can't be denied.


He did about 10; varying quality, and only a few that are very "Hitchcockian." The Farmer's Wife, for instance, is a comedy. Odd, that.


No music at all, actually. Talking, sound effects, and even a great trick of sound (elevating the volume of a key word over and over to heighten tension) that was remarkably innovative considering there were, like, two people in the world who had done talkies to that point. Blackmail - the movie in question - was in the middle of being filmed as a silent when sound technology became available, so Hitch shot new scenes and turned it into a sound film. It exists as both a talkie and a silent film. I've never seen the silent version.

For a 1929 film, it was a GREAT and very dark murder-in-self-defense scene.


It's been a blast so far. The amazing thing is, we're 30-some films into it, we've watched great classics like Strangers On A Train and Shadow Of A Doubt and Notorious and The 39 Steps, as well as little known gems like Lifeboat and Foreign Correspondent ... and we haven't even gotten to the best stuff yet! Vertigo, North By Northwest, The Birds, Psycho, Rear Window, dial M For Murder. So much great stuff!

(I have to write I Confess today, in fact, and watch Dial M this weekend.)

"Rear Window" is probably my favorite of the Hitch movies I've seen (and I've seen quite a few of 'em). He was an extremely gifted filmmaker. Sounds like a fun project, Eric!

I will say I don't like Kubrick's movies much at all.

My favorite Hitchcock film is Rear Widow. I also like Psycho very much. Vertigo is one I don't care for too much.

My understanding is that all the sound in THE JAZZ SINGER - music, dialogue, etc. was recorded on a phonograph record and that the record was played alongside the movie. Shortly after that, they perfected the technique of recording the sound right on the film. I could have a few facts wrong there, but I think that that's the gist.

Anyway, I was just wondering how Hitchcock recorded his sound movies: whether it was on a separate phonograph record or right on the film.

I know that many filmmakers actually considered sound a step backwards - and in a way, it was. Some silents have amazing scenery in them. When sound was invented, they had to shoot on sound stages, and suddenly, they couldn't do sweeping nature scenes anymore. (Some of the old silent Westerns, in particular, are postively breathtaking in their use of outdoor scenery.) A lot of early talkies resemble filmed theatre plays.


Are you watching DIAL M in 3-D?

I don't know if it's available in 3-D anymore, and I've never actually seen it that way. I understand that it was shown in 3-D originally, although you wouldn't know it. It views just fine without those effects.

I got this question earlier in the week and thought I'd ask the board, "What movie do you consider to be Hitchcock's most mainstream movie?"

I gave one answer, my friend gave another. I'll share both answers after the question is answered here.

This is what I heard when I saw your post

I was reading the posts out of order.....and for some reason when you wrote "Dial M" ..I thought "M" (by Lang).I thought to myself "M in 3D? That pretty weird,man.

I don't consider most of Hitch's films to be outside the mainstream, really. There are a few exceptions - such as VERTIGO and THE BIRDs - that are pretty dark and not be for everyone's taste. Hitchcock's movies were generally pretty popular, though, and I wouldn't call him a cult director.

If I had to pick a movie that was his most mainstream, I guess I'd pick NORTH BY NORTHWEST. It has a handsome leading man, a beautiful leading lady, a romance, intrigue, suspense and clear heroes and villains. That's the sort of thing that the general public laps right up. (That's not a criticism, mind you. NORTH BY NORTHWEST is actually one of my favorite Hitchcock films.)

Hah! Very nice, John. Knife indeed.

His most "mainstream" film? I dunno. Guess that depends on how you take the word. His best known is probably Psycho, but I'm not sure that makes the film 'mainstream.' Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a pretty typical (if unexceptional) screwball comedy that was pretty mainstream in its time. I'd probably say North By Northwest, though. It's just straight up fun, with big action, a big star and mass appeal.


I wish! It played in New York in 3D last winter during a big Hitch marathon. I was supposed to go, but the plans fell through at the last moment. I'd love to see it that way, just for the novelty of the thing.

I did see Kurosawa's Seven Samurai on the big screen in that same theater. AWESOME.

Regarding Blackmail, the sound was recorded right to film. In fact, here is some interesting trivia: The voice you hear from the lead actress is not her voice at all, but the voice of another actress standing just off screen! Anny Ondra was a great German actress, but her accent was too thick to be used in Britain's first talkie, so Joan Barry stood just off set and spoke all of Ondra's dialogue.

More trivia: The Chief Inspector in the silent version is played by a different actor than in the talkie version.