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The Times (14/Aug/2008) - 10 Alfred Hitchcock classics everyone should see once

(c) The Times (14/Aug/2008)

10 Alfred Hitchcock classics everyone should see once

Rebecca (1940)

Hitch's first Hollywood film, based on Daphne du Maurier’s novel, won the Oscar for Best Picture. Joan Fontaine plays the shy second wife of Laurence Olivier’s wintry aristocratic. But the hostile servants on his lonely estate and the mystery of his first wife’s death turn their marriage to ice.

Notorious (1946)

Ingrid Bergman is the daughter of a convicted spy, Cary Grant an American agent trying to expose a Nazi ring in South America. Their affair is a sickening tango of distrust and need as Grant uses Bergman to close in on his victim (Claude Rains). Powerful.

Rope (1948)

A neat, withering satire on the arrogance of youth. Two privileged philosophy students murder their friend, stuff him in a trunk, and invite James Stewart’s professor to dine over the corpse.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Two complete strangers (Farley Granger and Robert Walker) meet on a train and admit how wonderfully convenient it would be if they murdered the most annoying person in the other’s life. The horror kicks in when one of them follows through, and blackmails the other.

Rear Window (1954)

Wheelchair-bound James Stewart watches the couplings of strangers in the windows opposite, and becomes convinced that one of them has murdered his wife. Grace Kelly, does the dangerous leg-work.

Vertigo (1958)

Few Hitchcock films are more revealing about the director than this cynical and brilliant obsession with a murdered woman.

North by Northwest (1959)

Hitchcock throws everything into this helter-skelter thriller about a New York advertising executive forced to assume another man’s identity. Freudian nightmare of a conspiracy.

Psycho (1960)

The most famous horror film ever made. The shocks are now universal staples: the sexually damaged serial killer, the beauty ruthlessly erased in the first reel, and the kindly serial killer with Oedipal hang-ups.

The Birds (1963)

A plague of birds terrorises a small town. The avian attacks are brutal and shocking.

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