One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with a new identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. --Tom Keogh
To Catch a Thief is not one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, but it's arguably his most stylish thriller, loved as much for the elegantly erotic banter between Grace Kelly and Cary Grant as for the suspense that ensues when retired burglar Grant attempts to net the copycat diamond thief. The action, much of it shot on location, hugs the coast of the French Riviera; John Michael Hayes' screenplay crackles with doubles entendres; and Edith Head's dresses define the aloof poise of one of cinema's more enigmatic icons. If anything is missing, it's the undertow of black humour which snags the unsuspecting viewer in so many of Hitchcock's greater films. Here, the edge is supplied by the splendid Jessie Royce Landis as Kelly's vulgar, worldly mother; her special way with a fried egg is one of those cinematic moments which linger in the mind with almost pornographic disgust. History, of course, delivered its own ironic blow years later when the then Princess Grace of Monaco died in an accident on the very road where Kelly and Grant shot their exhilarating car chase. Portents aside, she remains Hitchcock's most alluring and sophisticated heroine. On the DVD: To Catch a Thief is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, which distils the distinctive qualities of the VistaVision cinematography, and with a mono Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Interesting extras include several mini-documentaries in which Hitchcock's daughter and granddaughter, among others, reminisce about the great director, censor problems over the risqué dialogue, the talents of costume designer Edith Head, and the peculiar difficulties of shooting in VistaVision. An original theatrical trailer is another bonus. --Piers Ford
Hitchcock's most notorious work remains terrifying after all these years, digitally presented, this reissue marks this milestone work's 50th Anniversary.
Classic Hitchcock movie starring Jane Wyman & Marlene Dietrich. Jonathan Cooper is wanted by the police who suspect him of killing his lover's husband. His friend Eve Gill offers to hide him and Jonathan explains to her that his lover, actress Charlotte Inwood is the real murderer. Eve decides to investigate for herself, but when she meets the detective in charge of the case, she starts to fall in love.
Both visually and psychologically, Marnie is crass in comparison with Hitchcock's peak achievement in Vertigo--although it shares some of that film's characteristic obsessive themes. Sean Connery, fresh from From Russia with Love, is a Philadelphia playboy who begins to fall for Tippi Hedren's blonde ice goddess only when he realises that she's a professional thief (she's come to work in his upper-crust insurance office in order to embezzle mass quantities). His patient programme of investigation and surveillance has a creepy, voyeuristic quality that's pure Hitchcock, but all's lost when it emerges that the root of Marnie's problem is phobic sexual frigidity, induced by a childhood trauma. Luckily, Sean is up to the challenge, as it were. Not even DH Lawrence believed as fervently as Hitchcock in the curative properties of sexual release. --David Chute
Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own 1934 spy thriller is an exciting event in its own right, with several justifiably famous sequences. James Stewart and Doris Day play American tourists who discover more than they wanted to know about an assassination plot. When their son is kidnapped to keep them quiet, they are caught between concern for him and the terrible secret they hold. When asked about the difference between this version of the story and the one he made 22 years earlier, Hitchcock always said the first was the work of a talented amateur while the second was the act of a seasoned professional. Indeed, several extraordinary moments in this update represent consummate film-making, particularly a relentlessly exciting Albert Hall scene, with a blaring symphony, an assassin's gun, and Doris Day's scream. Along with Hitchcock's other films from the mid-1950s to 1960 (including Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho), The Man Who Knew Too Much is the work of a master in his prime. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
The beautiful Mrs. Paradine is accused of poisoning her older blind husband. She hires married Anthony Keane as her lawyer and when he begins to fall in love with her she encourages him.
One of cinema’s greatest auteurs Alfred Hitchcock's six-decade career generated an unmissable run of suspense-packed thrillers strongly characterised by macabre plots and twist endings. Made in 1938 this classic comedy-thriller was arguably his most popular and significant pre-war feature and one of the films that helped pave his way to Hollywood success. Featuring a whimsically suspenseful script from Launder and Gilliat The Lady Vanishes boasts one of the all-time great ensemble casts and is featured here in a brand-new High Definition transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. Intrigue and espionage abound when a young woman travelling aboard a transcontinental express train strikes up an acquaintance with a charming elderly English governess who then disappears without a trace. Is the young woman hallucinating or is something altogether more sinister afoot..? Special Features: Introduction by Charles Barr Original Theatrical Trailer Image Gallery PDF Material
Titles Comprise: Destination Tokyo Arsenic And Old Lace Night and Day North By Northwest
Compilation box set containing 19 specially selected films starring Cary Grant including: She Done Him Wrong/ Mr Lucky/ Father Goose/ Indiscreet/ Operation Petticoat/ That Touch of Mink/ The Grass is Greener/ Blonde Venus/ Charade/ Suspicion/ I'm No Angel/ The Last Outpost/ In Name Only/ None But The Lonely Heart/ Once Upon a Honeymoon/ Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House/ Sylvia Scarlett/ My Favorite Wife/ Bringing Up Baby)
One of the most shocking films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho changed the thriller genre forever. After its original release in 1960, the film was censored for decades until now. Join the Master of Suspense on a chilling journey as an unsuspecting victim (Janet Leigh) visits the Bates Motel and falls prey to one of cinema's most notorious psychopaths - Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Featuring one of the most iconic scenes in film history - the famous shower scene, Psycho is still terrifying after all these years (Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide). INCLUDES 2 VERSIONS OF PSYCHO PSYCHO UNCUT: The extended version of the movie as seen in theaters in 1960 is exactly as intended by Alfred Hitchcock and now available with additional footage for the first time ever PSYCHO: The most widely seen version of the movie was edited for content and subsequently used for TV broadcasts, theatrical re-releases and home entertainment over the last 60 years BONUS FEATURES The Making of Psycho In the Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy Hitchcock / Truffaut Interview Excerpts Newsreel Footage: The Release of Psycho The Shower Scene: With and Without Music The Shower Sequence: Storyboards by Saul Bass Feature Commentary with Stephen Rebello (author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho) And More
By the time Alfred Hitchcock's second-to-last picture came out in 1972, the censorship restrictions under which he had laboured during his long career had eased up. Now he could give full sway to his lurid fantasies, and that may explain why Frenzy is the director's most violent movie by far--outstripping even Psycho for sheer brutality. Adapted by playwright Anthony Shaffer, the story concerns a series of rape-murders committed by suave fruit-merchant Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), who gets his kicks from throttling women with a necktie. This being a Hitchcock thriller, suspicion naturally falls on the wrong man--ill-tempered publican Richard Blaney (Jon Finch). Enter Inspector Oxford from New Scotland Yard (Alex McCowan), who thrashes out the finer points of the case with his wife (Vivian Merchant), whose tireless enthusiasm for indigestible delicacies like quail with grapes supplies a classic running gag.Frenzy was the first film Hitchcock had shot entirely in his native Britain since Jamaica Inn (1939), and many contemporary critics used that fact to account for what seemed to them a glorious return to form after a string of Hollywood duds (Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz). Hitchcock specialists are often less wild about it, judging the detective plot mechanical and the oh-so-English tone insufferable. But at least three sequences rank among the most skin-crawling the maestro ever put on celluloid. There is an astonishing moment when the camera backs away from a room in which a murder is occurring, down the stairs, through the front door and then across the street to join the crowd milling indifferently on the pavement. There is also the killer's nerve-wracking attempt to retrieve his tiepin from a corpse stuffed into a sack of potatoes. Finally, there is one act of strangulation so prolonged and gruesome it verges on the pornographic. Was the veteran film-maker a rampant misogynist as feminist observers have frequently charged? Sit through this appalling scene if you dare and decide for yourself. --Peter Matthews
Alfred Hitchcock himself called this 1934 British edition of his famous kidnapping story "the work of a talented amateur", while his 1956 Hollywood remake was the consummate act of a professional director. Be that as it may, this earlier movie still has its intense admirers who prefer it over the Jimmy Stewart--Doris Day version, and for some sound reasons. Tighter, wittier, more visually outrageous (back-screen projections of Swiss mountains, a whirly-facsimile of a fainting spell), the film even has a female protagonist (Edna Best in the mom part) unafraid to go after the bad guys herself with a gun. (Did Doris Day do that that? Uh-uh.) While the 1956 film has an intriguing undercurrent of unspoken tensions in nuclear family politics, the 1934 original has a crisp air of British optimism glummed up a bit when a married couple (Best and Leslie Banks) witness the murder of a spy and discover their daughter stolen away by the culprits. The chase leads to London and ultimately to the site of one of Hitch's most extraordinary pieces of suspense (though on this count, it must be said, the later version is superior). Take away distracting comparisons to the remake, and this Man Who Knew Too Much is a milestone in Hitchcock's early career. Peter Lorre makes his British debut as a scarred, scary villain. --Tom Keogh
One of the film-making industry's greatest auteurs, Alfred Hitchcock undoubtedly earned his title as The Master of Suspense, with his thrilling films loved by the viewing public over a career spanning many decades. Widely regarded as the first true Hitchcock film, The Lodger is a masterclass in tension, displaying all the trademarks of what was to become known as the typical Hitchcock thriller. Newly restored in High Definition, this release features a brand new orchestral soundtrack by acclaimed musician and composer Nitin Sawhney, performed by the world famous London Symphony Orchestra. On hearing reports of the seventh murder by The Avenger, Daisy decides to stay with her parents. She is being courted by Joe, a detective, who gets suspicious when her mother rents a room out to a lodger - to whom Daisy is attracted. While the lodger is out Joe takes the opportunity to search his room - there he finds a gun, press clippings of the killings and a map of the murders... Special Features: 2 Disc Soundtrack CD by Nitin Sawhney and the LSO Image Gallery Commemorative Booklet by Hitchcock Scholar Professor Neil Sinyard
It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas, and Jamaica Inn--a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall--is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to quit Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches--including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place--and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent--and far more accomplished--du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds.--Philip Kemp
Classic Hitchcock movie starring Grace Kelly & Ray Milland. Ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice decides to murder his wife for her money and because she had an affair the year before. He blackmails an old college associate to strangle her, but when things go wrong he sees a way to turn events to his advantage.
Alfred Hitchcock playfully explores the role of the voyeur in one of his best-loved suspense thrillers. After breaking his leg during a shoot, photo-journalist L.B. 'Jeff' Jeffries (James Stewart) is forced to spend a humid summer recuperating in his Greenwich Village apartment. The wheelchair-bound Jeff whiles away his time observing his neighbours through a telephoto lens, bestowing them with nicknames and growing familiar with their daily routines. However, his society girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) is exasperated and then alarmed when Jeff becomes obsessed with the notion that Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who lives in the apartment opposite, has murdered his wife. A 53-minute making of feature, 'Rear Window Ethics', is also included. Special Features: Rear Window Ethics: An Original Documentary A Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael Hayes Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of The Master Breaking Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock Rear Window Re-Release Trailer Narrated by James Stewart Feature Commentary with John Fawell Author of Hitchcock's Rear Window
Celebrated for the macabre tour-de-force plots and sublime twist endings that would come to define the very genre of suspense Alfred Hitchcock is one of cinema's greatest auteurs his career spanning six decades and over sixty films. Based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and starring Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's most significant pre-war British films. Featured here in a High Definition transfer from original film elements this classic early thriller has never looked better. Karl Verloc manager of a London cinema is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc they place an undercover detective on his trail – can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London? Special Features: Introduction by Charles Barr On Location featurette introduced by Robert Powell Image gallery
The Hitchcock Collection: Dial M for Murder The Wrong Man North by Northwest Strangers on a Train
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy