Master of Suspense.

Favorite movies? The actual show needs to come back on T.V.







of course,some of his greatest: The Birds,Pyscho,and Vertigo. Really, I like almost all of his movies and the movie posters. AMC used to show his movies all the time,but that channel was replaced with another one. TMC still plays some of them though....his more popular ones though.

AnckSuNamun said:

Marnie is a brilliant film, one of my favourites of his.

not too many Hitchcock fans here,I guess

AnckSuNamun said:

I love Hitch - here's a little fact I read in Olivier's autobiography:

Apparently, Olivier wanted Vivien Leigh to play Rebecca instead of Joan Fontaine and was really pissed when Hitch didn't cast her. But later, it probably ended up helping Larry's performance when the role called for de Winter to grow indifferent towards Rebecca. Some say Hitch may have cast the movie that way on purpose. Though Fontaine was good in the role, she was not as highly regarded as an actress as Leigh.

I know, I'm a movie geek.
[This message was edited Fri Aug 13 15:32:54 2004 by DiminutiveRocker]

I didn't know that. You learn something new everyday,and I love little movie facts like this. There's nothin' wrong with being a movie geek....especially if it's Hitchcock.

I love Hitchcock! I even took a class in college about him and his films!

Beyond his career as a director, which in itself is fascinating, Alfred Hitchcock the man was an extremely complex, intriguing individual. Learning more about him on a personal level really gave me a wonderful new perspective on his movies.

The TV show is great, and I think my favorite films of his are: Frenzy, Rebecca, Psycho, Rear Window, and Shadow of a Doubt.

Here's another trivia tidbit about him (and there is so much interesting trivia about Hitch and his movies!): he always made his background cameo appearance in his movies at the beginning of the film, because he knew the audience was watching for him and he didn't want to detract their attention away from the plotline.

He also liked - for some reason - to give his heroines names beginning with the letter "M", and he was obsessed with blonde women.

I think it's just plain wrong that he never won a Best Director Oscar for his work.

for Hitchcock!!

SnowQueen said:

me too

DiminutiveRocker said:

Rebecca was on t.v a couple of months ago, I love that film. I thought Joan Fontaine was excellent as the naive and eager to please Rebecca. However, that is not to detract from vivian Leigh who was a brilliant actress, A Streetcar Named Desire being a prime example.

thanks for the info DimunutiveRocker!, I didn't know this!

#1 Psycho

- for me it's his best film and I've seen all of them (some of them multiple times) except a for a couple more obscure ones

I also like
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Spellbound
Frenzy
Rebecca


I also really like High Anxiety, Mel Brooks' Hitchock parody

DiminutiveRocker said:

Hi! Yay for Hitchcock film classes!

I Love Hitchcock's The Birds,Psycho and FRENZY... Excellent....

MartyMcFly said:

damn tripod

SnowQueen said:

As if the Oscars are a guideline to quality; LoL

He was a bit odd, wasn't he? A bit pervy in a typically English way.

I like how he adapted during the course of his career. There weren't many classic Hollywood directors who could make a screwball comedy like 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' in 1941, then progress to something like 'Frenzy' in 1972 with it's naked breasts, strangling, bad language and general unpleasantness.

The rushes for the unfinished film 'Kaleidoscope' look like a John Schlesinger movie - he really did keep up with the times.

'Family Plot' is an oddity. It's really light and frothy on the surface but dark underneath, like a cappuccino. It looks like a 1970s Disney movie...

Here's two bits of trivia I know:

01. Psycho was originally made for television;

02. Hitchcock always made appearances in his films. In one film called 'Lifeboat' a group of passengers were stranded at sea. Hitchcock made his appearance by putting his photo on a magazine page that one of the actors was reading.


I took this from the Guardian's film pages...

Alfred Hitchcock's Kaleidoscope

In the mid-1960s, with his career at a low ebb following the critical failure of Marnie and an ambivalent response to Torn Curtain, Alfred Hitchcock worked on a groundbreaking experimental film that would have represented a radical change in his style-possibly heralding a new late phase of cinematic creativity.

Kaleidoscope was the story of a serial rapist and killer. It was initially envisaged as a kind of prelude to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. There would be several murders, including an attempt on the life of a decoy policewoman - an idea that particularly excited Hitchcock - and a Psycho-style stabbing. And the director intended to use story details from infamous UK criminal cases (including an acid bath murderer and a necrophile).

This could have been Hitchcock's darkest film. Indeed, Hitchcock himself worried that some scenes might be too frightening for the audience. In a bold move, he wanted to tell the entire story from the perspective of the killer, envisaged as an attractive, vulnerable young man (Hitchcock later decided that the character would be gay). More radically, he planned to experiment with innovative filming techniques such as hand-held filming and natural light.

Unfortunately, MCA studios turned the film down as they apparently thought that the protagonist was too "ugly", a decision that rankled with Hitchcock for the rest of his life. All that remains now of his experiment is an hour-long tape of silent footage - and the tantalising prospect of a new wave of Hitchcock films in a new vérité style, influenced by the European avant garde, to whom he had become a deity.

heartbeatocean said:

I love that one too.

BinaryJustin said:

MCA would've missed out. I thought that was kinda cool too,how he always made cameos in his own movies. A lot of time they were at the beginning of the movies,so the audience wouldn't get distracted.

gooeythehamster said:

Oh, is that what I said?

In regards to your snide comment, no - I don't think the Oscars are, in any way, a "guideline to quality". Obviously hese days the Oscar doesn't mean crap, imo. But I do think, however, that the Oscar meant a lot more years ago than it does nowadays and it might have been nice for Hitchcock to see his work honored in that way. A director of Hitchcock's calibre deserves that.

SnowQueen said:

I was not sniding at your comment, sweets. Because you are right; he should have gotten one, if not more.

But I just wanted to say that so many people who deserved one never got one. So it does not detrect for me his genius, which I see refelcted in M. Night Shyamalan's movies... he is a true disciple.

And even back in the day the Oscars were an in-crowd thing. It has all to do with celver strategies and who's doing who. In more ways than one.

The oscars are lame, but the problem is everybody wants one and everybody still talks about them. We need a new method of evaluating movies or a different way of talking about them...

BinaryJustin said:

I forgot about Family Plot. That's one's pretty goofy. Not his best though, as I remember.

gooeythehamster said:

Okay. I apologize for taking your comment the wrong way. I am touchy lately, I guess.

I am sorry.





.
[This message was edited Sat Aug 14 18:08:07 2004 by SnowQueen]

gooeythehamster said:

I suppose you are right about that.

heartbeatocean said:

Very true.

Lleena said:

You're welcome, Lleena!
Next time you watch it, check out Olivier... he was a tad bitter.

Hitchcock was a true genius, definitely.

I miss films like his now, ones where you can't be seated during the last 15 minutes, films where you truly don't know what to expect and it makes the tension grow even more.

I know M. Night Shamalan tries to match that, even with the director's cameos, but Hitchcock is the master.

My favorite of his work has to be Alfred Hitchcock Presents-the show still holds up well.

As for the films-I seem to see more and more as the years go by, films I had seemed to forget about, but I'll always love The Birds and Psycho as they're my first introductions to his work.

Hitchfrock wasn't a good writer. You kan tell that he had help from others. A better writer or story teller was Vincent Price. He was the man.


Hitchfrock no way

The Price is right