TSPDT - Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Survey of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal)

Telegraph's Top 21 British Directors of All Time

Gilles Jacob's 5 Best Directors

Kent Jones' Top 10 Directors

Angel Fernández Santos' 5 Best Directors

David Sterritt's Top 10 Directors

►501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

See Also

Roy Ward Baker

William Castle

Claude Chabrol

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Francois Truffaut

Director / Producer / Screenwriter

1899 - 1980

Born August 13, Leytonstone, London, England

Key Production Countries: USA, UK

Key Genres: Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Spy Film, Romantic Mystery, Mystery, Drama, Comedy, Comedy Thriller, , Political Thriller, Detective Film, Crime Thriller, Crime Drama, Chase Movie

Key Collaborators: Robert Burks (Cinematographer), Alma Reville (Screenwriter), George Tomasini (Editor), Bernard Herrmann (Composer), Charles Bennett (Screenwriter), Leo G. Carroll (Leading Character Player), Michael Balcon (Producer), Hal Pereira (Production Designer), James Stewart (Leading Player), Cary Grant (Leading Player)

Highly Recommended: The 39 Steps (1935), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964)

Recommended: The Lodger (1926), Rich and Strange (1932), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Sabotage (1936), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rope (1948), I Confess (1953), Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Frenzy (1972), Family Plot (1976)

Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Hitchcock Online ] [ Alfred Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense ] [ Mystery Net Pages ] [ 'The MacGuffin' Web Page ] [ The Films of Alfred Hitchcock ] [ Senses of Cinema's Hitchcock Articles ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Feature ] [ Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hiitchcock (1963) ] [ BBC Audio Interviews (1966) ] [ Alfred Hitchcock at Reel Classics ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Article (2007) ] [ Film-Philosophy (pdf) ] [ Offscreen Article (2008) ] [ Rare One-Hour Interview with Hitchcock ]

Books: [ Hitchcock-Truffaut ] [ The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures ] [ Hitchcock on Hitchcock ] [ Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light ] [ It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock ] [ The Alfred Hitchcock Story ] [ The Dark Side of Genius : The Life of Alfred Hitchcock ]

DVD's: [ Amazon ]

1,000 Greatest Films: The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964)

250 Quintessential Noir Films: Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Wrong Man (1956)


	"Alfred Hitchcock is the supreme technician of the American cinema. Even his many enemies cannot begrudge him that distinction. Like Ford, Hitchcock cuts in his mind, and not in the cutting room with five different setups for every scene. His is the only contemporary style that unites the divergent classical traditions of Murnau (camera movement) and Eisenstein (montage)." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

	"Though he seemingly cared little if backdrop scenery was obviously artificial, he was a superb technician, expert at orchestrating the irruption of menacing, life-changing chaos into a complacent, deceptively safe and ordered world." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

	"Although he chose to limit his thematic range to the genre of suspenseful melodrama and has disappointed some high-minded critics with his lack of seriousness or interest in important social issues. Hitchcock is without question among the few most gifted directors who ever worked in the film medium. A supreme technician and stylist with an unmistakable personal imprint and a great visual artists, he is impossible to dismiss as just the "Master of Suspense", as he has been frequently described." - (The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994)

	"Any American director who says he hasn't been influenced by him is out of his mind." - John Frankenheimer

	"The master of suspense, Hitchcock is a genius at filming the unexpected, from whole scripts to characters and little, insignificant plot elements." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

	"I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theatre - and it has to be filled." - Alfred Hitchcock (Directing the Film, 1976)

	"Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms." - Alfred Hitchcock

	"I enjoy playing the audience like a piano." - Alfred Hitchcock