Happy (belated) Birthday Alfred Hitchcock!

Yesterday was the 109th anniversary of the birth of one of my favourite directors! I thought it was fitting to write a little something related to the unbeatable master of suspense that was Alfred Hitchcock. So I'm going to do a Top 5 countdown of my favourite Hitchcock films:

5. Rebecca (1940)

Joan Fontaine, in a breathtaking performance, plays a young, naive woman who meets and then marries a rich widower, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and they both set to start their new life in his enormous mansion. However, the memory of the first Mrs. de Winter (Rebecca) still lingers in the mind of Maxim and the house's servants, particularly in Mrs. Danvers, played by Judith Anderson in one of the best performances of all time. The atmosphere Hitchcock creates in this film is astonishing, as Rebecca's presence is felt all throughout the film without her ever appearing on screen. Mrs. Danvers plays a key role in this too and the obvious attachment and creepy fascination she had for her former mistress is both disturbing and suggestive, and she acts as a cruel reminder of the (gigantic) shoes Fontaine's character so desperately wants and needs to fill. Every image reeks of doom and gloom in a striking black and white cinematography and Hitchcock's narrative is suspenseful and eerily compelling.

4. Rope (1948)

One of the most thoroughly entertaining films I've ever seen. The premise is already quite fascinating: two young men murder a fellow classmate (just because they feel he was "inferior" to them) and then throw him a party in order to challenge the perfection of their crime. It is so amusing to watch the party guests chat about the usual Hitchcockian topics (the perfect murder, for example!) and wonder where the celebrated man could be, while his actual body is right there in the very same room they are all in. The film feels a lot like a play, all in one setting and with no "noticeable" cuts (Hitchcock wanted to shoot the whole thing in one take but didn't have the technology to pull it off; nevertheless he did his best to hide those cuts) but the camerawork is mind-blowing. The performers are all a joy to watch, the standouts being John Dall as the charismatic killer and James Stewart as the two boy's teacher who becomes increasingly suspicious as the evening wears on.

3. The Birds (1963)

The basic plot is: Melanie Daniels, a spoiled socialite (Tippi Hedren in a delightful and criminally underrated performance), "chases" hunky bachelor Mitch Brenner (played by Rod Taylor) when suddenly, a seagull attacks her in what's to be the first but definitely not the last bird attack in Bodega Bay. It's never explained why the birds attack, but that just makes the whole thing even more terrifying. The idea that nature can turn against us like that is something that's been haunting me since I first saw the film. But anyway, this is only the immediate, superficial layer of the film. It's interesting how people are still being fooled by the B-horror appearance of the film and think that it was only meant to work on a literal level when it’s actually an extremely complex and richly layered film and probably Hitchcock's most purely cinematically brilliant film. This time the usually fundamental Hitchcock score is replaced by the groundbreaking use of sound, which, together with the cinematography and editing, combine to create as tense and creepy an atmosphere as I've hardly seen before. Add to that the ahead-of-its time visual effects; the birds look dated today, no doubt, but were primary reference to films such as Jaws and Alien. The sense of dread Hitchcock creates is astonishing. The film works as a metaphor for many different things (left open to interpretation), and if one is familiar enough with Hitchcock's most recurrent themes (sexual repression, family, Oedipal conflict, etc.) one might be able to guess exactly what he had in mind when he made this film.

2. Vertigo (1958)

James Stewart, playing against type, is a retired cop who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife, a beautiful Kim Novak in a challenging role. She is evidently distressed, and Stewart's character Scottie believes she's under some kind of spell. However, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the distant, cold and more importantly, blonde woman as the film moves along and that’s as far as I will go as plot is concerned. The most interest aspect about this film is the parallelisms between Stewart’s character and Hitchcock himself. In fact, this (sexual) obsession mirrors no other than Hitchcock’s own freaky fascination with blondes (most notably Grace Kelly). This is far and away Hitchcock's most personal film and probably his ultimate masterpiece. It's spellbinding from start to end relying less on dialogues and more on Bernard Herrmann’s magnus opus of a score and Stewart and Novak's astonishing performances. Vertigo is without a doubt Hitchcock's best directional achievement, the deliberate slow pace and the lavish visuals create an irresistible and incredibly unforgettable dream-like ambience which draws you in and never lets go.

1. Rear Window (1954)

Much like Rope this film is set all in one place: L. B. Jeffries's (James Stewart) claustrophobic apartment, but again, much like Rope this film is incredibly compelling and never loses steam. Jefferies is a photographer who needs to spend some time on a wheel chair recovering from an accident but the regular visits of his beautiful girlfriend (Grace Kelly) and his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter in a hilarious performance) fail to keep him entertained enough, so he starts peeping out of his window and "spying" on his neighbours. The plot thickens when he thinks he's seen one of them committing a murder. James Stewart as the voyeur and pseudo-psychologist is as great as he's ever been, but he's not the only one who is completely mesmerized by what he sees. Indeed, Hitchcock expertly lures the audience into these voyeuristic habits and one quickly finds oneself guessing and drawing conclusions out of what we can see through Jeff's window. Everything about this brilliant film is perfection: the clever script, the stellar cast and Hitch's masterful direction, but it’s its fascinating study of these psychological aspects of the human mind that makes Rear Window stand out as one of the best films of all time.