For Hitchcock's first American film, he delivered a powerful punch and one of the most atmospheric movies ever made. Adapted from the popular Daphne de Maurier novel, Rebecca had a tumultuous production, with Hitchcock battling producer David O. Selznick for control of the film, which is odd because the final film is so polish. Despite all these issues, the movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards and was a huge hit at the box office. While his British films got Hitchcock on the map as a burgeoning talent, Rebecca announced his presence to the world as one of the best filmmakers working.
Rebecca starts out like a straightforward romance between widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and a young woman (Joan Fontaine), who meet at Monte Carlo, fall in love and are married after only two weeks. However, the movie soon morphs into a Gothic horror story with some of the most unique characteristics of any film, past or present. As the newly weds return to Manderley, the de Winter's giant country home, the bride is faced with living up to the standards of her husband's deceased wife, Rebecca. Complicating matters is Manderley's vindictive housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who is obsessed with Rebecca and resents the woman trying to take her place. She terrorizes the new bride and makes her life miserable, manipulating to the breaking point. The movie chronicles the unraveling both the mystery of Rebecca and the sanity of several characters.
What makes the movie so singular is that of the five main characters in the movie, one is a house the other is dead. Manderley is a tremendous set, with amazing architecture, furniture, as well as something much more important and intangible: atmosphere. The house is a character in of itself, in almost every scene the amount of haunting and foreboding that it provides adds to every scene. Hitchcock uses a lot of zoomed out shots of Fontaine in Manderley's massive halls, giving you a sense of how isolated and overwhelmed she is. Like the house, Max's dead wife Rebecca dwarfs His new wife and is just as much, if not more, of a character. While the movie itself is named after her, and Rebecca is spoken of in almost every scene, Fontaine's character is never even given a name, credited only as "the second Mrs. de Winter." Rebecca haunts every scene, and the mystery and obsession of her is what drives the movie to it's dramatic conclusion.
Originally not very well received at the time of its release, both critically and commercially, Vertigo has undergone quite a resurgence in the eyes of critics and fans in the last couple years. Now considered one of the best of Hitchcock's canon, Vertigo is a gripping thriller that sometimes raises more questions than it answers, but it thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.
The plot revolves around Scottie Furguson (Jimmy Stewart), a retired police officer who suffers from acrophobia (fear of heights) which gives him acute vertigo spells. Furguson, who spends much of his time around his old college friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), is hired by another old friend, Gavin Elster, to follow his disturbed wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) to make sure she doesn't kill herself. While tailing her, Scottie eventually falls in love with her, but is devastated when he unable, due to his acrophobia, to save her from throwing herself from a bell tower. Scottie is haunted by her, and becomes obsessed with another woman who looks just like her. The plot twists and turns from there, culminating in a shocking, ambiguous ending that leaves your mouth agape. The movie strives to immerse you in it's story and is mostly successful, making terrific use of on-location filming all over San Francisco while narrowing it's focus to just a few characters. You are drawn out of the immersion by the one issue Vertigo has: the age difference between Stewart (then 50), and the two female leads Novak (25) and Bel Geddes (36). It's hard to buy the romance when Stewart is twice Novak's age, while Bel Geddes character was supposed to be in college with Stewart, despite the 14 year age difference. Still, Vertigo is a tremendous story and a very well crafted film.
Vertigo was not a hit compared to other of Hitchcock's movies in the 50s, while critics thought it was too long with a muddled plot. In the last 15 or so years, however the movie has shot up "best movies of all time" lists, ranked 9th by AFI and 1st by BFI's Sight & Sound. So why the big rise in critical acclaim? Vertigo is the ultimate modern critics film and the influence it has had on movies is undeniable. The movie was the first to extensively use dolly zooms to create disorientation (known as the "Vertigo-effect"), it's use of color pallets was revolutionary for it's time, and the psychedelic nature of Scottie's dreams foreshadowed much of 60s cinema. The ambiguous, dark ending was also revolutionary for its time. Also, the symbolism, style, themes, and directorial work by Hitchcock in Vertigo can be found in subsequent films from every decade. Sometimes, the style can take the front seat, but the substance of Vertigo always shine through.
As far as pure, unbridled entertainment goes, North By Northwest is not only unrivaled in Hitchcock's canon, but it stands up with the greatest adventure movies of all time. It's not a movie that wants to bog you down with big ideas, or even make you think much about what you're seeing. What North By Northwest wants to do is give you that feeling that only movies can give you, that sense of adventure and wonder, transporting you to a world of spies and intrigue. Much in the way that an ordinary advertising executive like Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) can be taken from his mundane, everyday life and enter into an adventure, where he is mistaken for a spy, accused of murder, and on the run from both police and enemy agents. In the same way, the audience can enter in to the adventure through the wonder of the big screen. North By Northwest scratches the itch of anyone who wants a little bit of adventure in their otherwise normal lives. The audience lives vicariously through Thornhill as he makes his way across the country, hiding his identity, falling in love with a beautiful woman (Eva Marie Saint), and matching wits with enemy spies (James Mason and Martin Landau). The movie goes from one large set-piece to the next, each one topping the last before finally climaxing with the iconic fistfight on top of Mount Rushmore.
Screenwriter Ernest Lehman said that in writing North By Northwest, he wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures," and in many ways he succeeded. The film takes the pieces of different Hitchcock films from the past, the innocent man on the run, the mysterious love interest, thrilling scenes in iconic locations, then blows them up to epic proportions. Even the battle on top of a famous American landmark can be traced back to Saboteur (1942), while the airplane scene has it's origins in The 39 Steps (1935). Everything is super-sized in North By Northwest, the action, the intrigue, the tension, even the music. This, and the profound sense of escapism, is what makes it one of the most purely entertaining, popcorn-crunching, heartrate-raising adventure movies of all time.
Rear Window is a movie made purely to entertain, thrill, and captivate. It doesn't have any kind of significant character development or any real subplots, nor does it have some grand point to make. It simply wants to entertain you, to keep you on the edge of your seat, and it does that to perfection.
Rear Window places you in the apartment of L.B. "Jeff" Jefferies, a professional photographer who recently broke his leg, and now if confined to a wheelchair his apartment while he recovers. Jeff passes the time observing his neighbors, innocently at first. For a while, all he sees are the run of the mill events you'd expect: a date, someone exercising, a musician practicing, even an argument. It's this argument that signals the darker turn of the plot, as Jeff starts to suspect one of his neighbors Lars (Raymond Burr) may have murdered his wife. As Jeff tries to put the pieces together, he is visited by his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter), and friend Tom (Wendall Corey), who all try to convince him he is simply imagining things due to cabin fever. As Jeff's obsession grows, so does the evidence against Lars, and he is finally able to convince his friends to help investigate. As they search for clues, the suspense grows, climaxing in a nail-biting final sequence that makes the audience feel as stuck in their chairs as Jeff is.
The best of Hitchcock's "limited setting" films, Rear Window transports you into a single location, narrowing your focus from only that point of view. This effect gives you the same feeling of voyeurism, claustrophobia, and eventually helplessness that Jeff feels, trapped in his room. Rear Window strikes close to home, because anyone with neighbors has spied on them, and maybe even suspected them of something untoward.
Though not nearly his first film, or even the earliest on this list, The 39 Steps is a crucial early point in Hitchcock's career. Not only does the movie introduce many of the themes that pop up numerous times in his later works, but it also establishes Hitchcock's distinct visual style. The backwards and forwards tracking camera, ironic jump-cuts, and close perspective shots are all classic Hitchcockian style that have their origin in The 39 Steps. While on the story front, the movie introduces plot devices such as the innocent man on the run, a MacGuffin, and an ordinary man getting involved in a conspiracy well beyond himself. While it is a very important film from an historical standpoint, The 39 Steps is also one of the best spy thrillers ever made with tremendous characters, acting, cinematography, and direction.
The movies tells the story of Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), a Canadian visiting London, who meets a mysterious woman named Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim) who is clearly distressed. Richard brings Annabella back to his apartment where she explains she is a spy who has uncovered a plot to steal British intelligence plans, as well as mentioning something called "the 39 steps" in Scotland. The next morning, Richard finds Annabella dead and, knowing he will be accused of the murder, flees to Scotland to clear his name. Along the way, Richard becomes involved in the intrigue, first hindered and then assisted by the beautiful Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) as he attempts to thwart the enemy agents. Throughout the whole of the movie, the audience is as in the dark as the main character, but it isn't just the mystery that keeps the movie going, the characters are so rich. Even those who are on screen for only a minute make a big impression, the nervous politician, the suspicious farmer, the humorous and deceptive local constable, all these characters have small parts but fill the film to the brim with humanity, humor, and depth. The 39 Steps is the first of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces, a movie that has combines suspense and intrigue with subtle humor and heart like so many of the best films of all time.
