Your Top 5 Alfred Hitchcock Movies

It would have been in my top ten for sure...

 

Glad to see love for Dial M For Murder. I thought I was the only one who rated it so highly.

 

Agreed. I like Tippie and the bank sequence but the film just doesn't do it for me and I get annoyed and turn it off before it's over.

I think I'd like Topaz more if we followed Roscoe Lee Browne's character around instead of everybody else. His brief sequence is the only part of the movie I find enjoyable.


Let's hear it for Torn Curtain! I like it!

 

I've never seen it in 3D, but the 2D version is just fine by me. Sure there are a few "Dr. Tongue's 3D House of (fill-in-the-blank)" moments, but I just love Grace Kelly's performance in Dial M.

I often wish she'd pick up a fireplace tool and beat Ray Milland to death with it. He's such an awesome bad guy in this flick.

 

I guess I'll give it another shot sometime. My friend Marlene Noble worked on the big restoration many years back. I've never seen that work!

 

Have others Hitchcock top five lists changed radically over time?

I used to be pretty dismissive of Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho and The Lady Vanishes a decade ago. Now those are up there. Others like The Birds, North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief have gone the opposite direction.


And hey chadbang. Long time no see.

 

Strangers on a Train
Notorious
Shadow of a Doubt
Vertigo
The Lady Vanishes

I don't mind saying I like the much maligned Topaz also; several great set pieces, lots of suspense. I prefer the theatrical cut with the suicide ending.

 

North by Northwest
Frenzy
Psycho
39 Steps
Sabotage or Saboteur (whichever one has Desmond Tester with the bomb)

 

You're not alone. While I like it, it didn't make my top 5. Just a bit too slow, even though I do like many aspects of it (I like the score, the atmosphere, the San Fransisco shots, Jimmy & Kim). But overall it's just not my favorite.

 

Vertigo
Shadow Of A Doubt
Rear Window
North By Northwest
Psycho

 

Shadow of a Doubt was another really great film. That one is really twisted; Joseph Cotten as the evil "Uncle Charlie" was never better. And the ongoing references to the "Merry Widow" waltz are strange and memorable.

 

Is there any role Cotten didn't hit gold? Man, he's under-appreciated.

 

The Lady Vanishes
The Saboteur
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
39 Steps
I Confess

Well top six.

 

Just watched Portrait of Jennie. Great film when you're discouraged as I was a few days ago.

 

Okay, I got it down to 10 but am leaving out way too many. Even the lower tier films have many great merits.
Vertigo-His best film in color.
Notorious-His best in B&W.
North by Northwest-Bond prototype no.1
Foreign Correspondent-Bond prototype no.2
Rear Window-Evil jewelry salesmen.
Rope-eerily captivating.
The 39 Steps-first true masterpiece.
Psycho-such a wonderful perverted joke.
Frenzy-another great joke but with a potato truck.
The Man Who Knew Too Much-'56 version, my soft spot pick. Sad that the state of this film has been neglected. Despite a few flaws it really does obliterate the original '34 version.

 

It's an amazing restoration, especially if you remember the horribly washed out and "brightened" pan & scan version they showed on TV throughout the 80s.

I saw the restored version at the Cinerama in Seattle, it was an amazing experience to see Vertigo in that theater.

 

I thought they did a good job on the picture for Vertigo, but that stereo remix...

 

Yeah, I really like both of those too. I've always like the scene in Foreign Correspondent where he knocks out the lights on the EL in HOTEL, then it shows the word HOT on McCrea's trail..across from EUROPE... hot on his trail across Europe? funny stuff.

 

Also I find vertigo to be an interesting film I admire but I dot really like watching it. I'll grab 10 other hitch films before that one

Love seeing the variety of films of his on people's lists. Waiting for one to put on the Parradine Case!

 

Vertigo's secret weapon is its score. It doesn't get better than Bernard Herrmann's music for this film.

 

I agree. I must have the score to Vertigo on about 12 different CDs -- I've listened to it at least 100 times, maybe more. That opening theme gets me every time, with the waves and waves of strings...

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine and I took a "San Francisco Vertigo Tour," where a guy took us around to various parts of the city, to all the main places shown in the film. We could only approach the place by the bridge where Jimmy Stewart jumped in the water to save Kim Novak, because it was blocked off after 9/11, but we got close enough to see it was not a place you'd want to be swimming in. Great sights, though, and a lot of the buildings still survive, more than 50 years after the movie was made.

 

Mercury
Phase Four
Silva Screen
Sony (Salonen)
Milan (Bernstein)
Varese (McNeely)
Schifrin's

... I know only 7 versions.

 

I have a 1969 recording by Hermann with the London Philharmonic on Decca (London CD), which has a ten minute excerpt from Vertigo, plus bits of Psycho, Marnie, North by Northwest and The Trouble With Harry. Is good.

Oooh look: there's a version in print (with bonus tracks)
http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Great-Hitchcock-Movie-Thrillers/dp/B000008JN1

 

1. Rope
2. Rear Window
3. North by Northwest
4. The Birds
5. 39 Steps(I have never seen a decent print of this film)