Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked
Good evening.
It is a very rare thing for a director’s name to be known outside of film circles. Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese might be some of the rare exceptions to the general rule that if you mention a director’s name to someone in the street, you’ll get blank looks in return. Alfred Hitchcock is the giant of all giants. Over five decades and over fifty feature films, Hitchcock carved out a unique legacy, earning the moniker ‘The Master of Suspense’ by crafting some of the best suspense films, spy thrillers, black comedies, and murder mysteries ever put to screen.
Born in London on August 13th, 1899, Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born the son of a greengrocer with a severe sense of discipline and the law. An often-recited anecdote about Hitchcock involves him being taken to a police station as a boy (sometimes five years old, sometimes six or seven), and being locked in a cell for an hour. When he was let out, he was told ‘that’s what happens to naughty boys.’ This event would seem to haunt him throughout his life, hence an overwhelming distrust of the police throughout his films and an apparent obsession with handcuffs.
With initial interests in both engineering and geography (including learning most of the train and bus routes of London by heart), he later got a job at a small newspaper, looking over proofs late into the night. This first step into a commercial world of images and storytelling, combined with a growing love of fiction writing, would lead him to work as a title-card designer in London for Islington Studios in 1919. Encouraged to try his hand at anything, rather than keep to a strict job role, he helped with production design, camera, and other art department roles, for over 15 silent films.
Hitchcock would eventually get to try his hand at directing in 1922 with Number 13, of which only a few scenes were filmed before the funds ran out. His second attempt, 1923’s Always Tell Your Wife, a short comedy film, has only two surviving reels. Leading up to 1925, he would continue to work all over, including in Germany under Fritz Lang, of whom Hitchcock was a big admirer. This exposure to German expressionism, and his first ten years in the film industry working in silent cinema, would mould the way Hitchcock would block and shoot his films throughout his career to come, cementing his preference for giving as much information as possible through the visuals alone.
It would be in 1925 that the first feature-length Hitchcock film would be made, The Pleasure Garden. When combined with The Lodger in 1927, it made the young Alfred Hitchcock the most sought-after director in Britain. He would go on to produce the UK’s first talkie, Blackmail (1929), define the spy thriller genre on film, be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars four times, have his films win a total of 41 Academy Awards (including Best Picture for Rebecca in 1940), and make an indelible mark on cinema.
Always regarded as one of the greats, it seems strange now that in the 1960s when film criticism was truly beginning, and the Auteur Theory was taking off, it took a lot of convincing for publishers to take anything on Hitchcock seriously, so much was he seen as simply a competent director of silly little thriller pictures. In the decades beyond, however, he has gone on to influence almost every director under the sun, from Steven Spielberg to Christopher Nolan to Guillermo del Toro. When thrillers are released, all too often are they referred to as Hitchcockian, even nearly 50 years after his final film. When Hitchcock passed away due to ill health in 1980, having months before received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, cinema lost one of its leading lights, a man who went all the way from the German Expressionist silent films, through the golden age of Hollywood, and into the New Wave. It’s impossible to think of another who traversed such a large swathe of cinema history, and accomplished so much.
Here, then, The Film Magazine counts down all of the surviving feature films by Alfred Hitchcock in tribute to the name above all others. We have excluded his short films, which include the propaganda shorts he made during the Second World War, his directorial efforts on his television show ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, and his incomplete or lost films. Going from 53 to 1, we hope your anticipation for what film comes next in the list rivals the anticipation one might get watching a film by the Master of Suspense himself. These are: Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked.
53. The Pleasure Garden (1925)
The first completed feature film directed by Alfred Hitchcock is certainly, for obvious reasons, his least accomplished.
A tale of chorus girl dancers searching for stardom at the eponymous Pleasure Garden, and the love triangle that evolves with husbands and the rich aristocrats that can escort the women up the ladder, it is a film of a director beginning to find his way, though it isn’t completely without merit.
The Pleasure Garden contains many elements that would become Hitchcock trademarks over the years, such as the theme of voyeurism present right at the very start of the film as people watch the line dancers perform, a staircase motif (amusingly mocked by Hitchcock himself in a 1976 interview) in the very first shot, and moments of humour; the film ends with a joke involving the film’s dog, Cuddles. Due to unchained camera techniques only just becoming a thing (commonly associated with Kar Freund’s work in F.W. Murnau’s 1924 film The Last Laugh), The Pleasure Garden is static and blocky, though there are a few moments of tracking where Hitchcock tries to add some flair. It all feels a bit too rude and nowhere near the standard that the creative visionary would become renowned for in the coming years.
52. Champagne (1928)
After a string of critical and commercial successes, Alfred Hitchcock, at the request of the producers under whom he was contracted, returned to the comedy genre with Champagne, a story of a young heiress forced to work for a living after her father goes bankrupt. From an original story by former critic Walter C. Mycroft, Hitchcock reportedly came up with moments and ideas on the day they would shoot them. Unfortunately, it shows.
There are odd moments of traditional flair in the film, with some creative fades and dissolves, and a magnificent POV shot of someone drinking champagne, with a crowd or couple seen through the bottom of the glass. This particular effect required a very expensive giant goblet to be created, and it is used incredibly well. If only that were the case for the rest of the film, because this single shot is the most interesting part of Champagne.
Nothing is engaging (though there are a few little moments of humour) and it simply wanders around, not knowing what to do with itself. It’s a strange combination of the downward spiral of Downhill (1927) and the humour of The Farmer’s Wife (1928), and irritatingly doesn’t manage either of them to the same degree.
51. The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
The Farmer’s Wife is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s nine silent films. Although he tries to add some flair to what is an interesting premise, he doesn’t manage to establish anything meaningful with it.
Alone and despondent now that his family are all gone or married, a profitable farmer (Jameson Thomas) goes about trying to find a new wife. Unfortunately, everyone on his list doesn’t seem to want to play ball, and the romantic comedy that follows is, in essence, a series of vignettes which try to amuse but do almost anything but.
With the director coming off the back of films such as The Lodger (1927) and The Ring (1927), The Farmer’s Wife seems slow and sedate by comparison. There are moments when Hitchcock tries to use his imagination and put in some Murnau-like unchained camera moves, but most of the shots, aside from the odd pan, are fairly static. One very quick dolly-in on a fruit bowl is fun, but it comes so out-of-the-blue that you’ll initially wonder if you ever actually saw it. The film is also a good twenty minutes too long, the storyline stodgy and predictable, and it is clear that although Hitchcock always kept humour in his arsenal, the full-on comedy was to be a general rarity, especially when compared to his thrillers.
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50. Juno and the Paycock (1930)
In a career as renowned as Alfred Hitchcock’s, it is sometimes possible to forget that he had his off moments and made complete duds. Juno and the Paycock is one of those films that should have been left on the stage.
At the time when he was wanted everywhere in Britain, having previously made Blackmail and launched the talkies, Hitchcock was asked to adapt Sean O’Casey’s story of the Troubles in 1922 Ireland. Hitchcock would later confess to French film critic turned respected filmmaker Francois Truffaut (in the book “Hitchcock“) that he was disappointed in Juno and the Paycock because he couldn’t find a way to make it into a good film – the mediums of stage and screen clashed with this picture.
Whilst in theory there are some interesting moments, especially with characters hiding secrets from each other, there’s far too much singing and dancing thrown in purely because it’s possible; they had the magic of synchronised sound by this point, after all. The odd inventive camera moment tries to give this film a visual point of interest too, but it’s generally far too talkative for a Hitchcock film and drags its heels at almost every moment. It’s simply not a good movie.
This is probably the worst of all of Hitchcock’s talkies, a film that should only be seen to complete his filmography.
49. Downhill (1927)
After finding success with The Lodger and The Ring, Alfred Hitchcock turned to straight drama with an adaptation of the play by Constance Collier and Ivor Novello (who would play the main role of Roddy in the film).
Thrown out of Oxford for allegedly getting a girl pregnant (taking the blame for his friend, Tim), the film follows Roddy Berwick’s wandering travels through Europe, mainly France, and his trials and tribulations that mar his attempt to make something of himself, everything getting worse and worse for the young man.
Downhill, or When Boys Leave Home in the United States, isn’t an awful picture, and shows moments of the usual Hitchcock flair. The final act, titled “The World of Lost Illusions”, features some engaging, hallucinatory cross-fades, and the shot of Novello descending the escalator, showing his ‘downhill’ fall, is fun, even if Hitchcock did later say that it was far too on the nose. The issue is that much of the film is slow and stumbles around lost for much of its runtime. If only Hitchcock could have trimmed everything down a touch – twenty seconds here and thirty seconds there – then the film might have flowed a little better. As it is, it isn’t disastrous, but it’s nowhere near Hitchcock’s best, even for the time of his silents.
48. Easy Virtue (1928)
Based on the Noel Coward play of the same name, Easy Virtue finds itself eerily prophetic of Hitchcock’s later work.
After a love-triangle scandal, Larita (Isobel Jeans) escapes to the Riviera, there falling in love with the rich Robin Irvine (John Whittaker). Unaware of her hidden, scandalous past, and with Larita being a fake name to try and hide it, he marries her and takes her back to England, where she is embraced by the family, all except John’s austere mother (Violet Farebrother).
In some universes, this would be a very easy pick for a companion piece to Hitchcock’s later, Oscar-winning film, Rebecca (1940). In this case, it is the lady with secrets to hide instead of the husband. The hum of secrets, trading in lies and double-dealing in falsehoods, is where Hitchcock was growing in strength, and this film is all about them in its very core. It’s not astonishing, but it’s fun to see the director continuing to experiment with camera movement, especially in the use of pushes/pulls to bookend the opening court scene’s constant flashbacks.
He might have had other silent pictures that were better, but Easy Virtue has its charms, and sees Hitchcock far more comfortable with the material than the others he had made up until that point.
47. Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
After taking a year out for the first time in many years, Alfred Hitchcock returned with two films in 1934. One arguably made his career, and the other is one of his worst talkies. Waltzes from Vienna (or Strauss’ Great Waltz), is certainly the latter.
A highly fictionalised version of Johann Strauss’s composition and debut of his famous “Blue Danube” waltz, the film actually uses this only as a plot motivator, using most of its runtime to focus on a love triangle between Strauss (Esmond Knight), young Resi (Jessie Matthews), and the Countess Helga von Stahl (Fay Compton).
This, then, is the problem: two conflicting storylines – that of the romantic plot and the composition plot, (Strauss trying to prove himself to his father) – getting in the way of each other.
The celebration of the performance of one of the greatest compositions in orchestral history, which admittedly is rousing, is undermined by an attempt to get us to care about romances that we don’t. The comedic nature of the film, especially the first few scenes, combat against the familial duel that is Strauss’ actual driving motivation. Had the film been focused on this section, with a little romance on the side, it might have succeeded. As it is, aside from a few stirring scenes with the actual performance of the waltz, it is muddled and confused as to what it is truly meant to be.
It was clear from this failure that Hitchcock was never going to be a great director of musicals, and said to Truffaut later that he only made the film to keep working, as he had other projects on the go at the same time.
46. Rich and Strange (1931)
Alfred Hitchcock didn’t write many screenplays himself, and after 1932 he wouldn’t write any at all. Rich and Strange is one of his final scripts, co-written with wife Alma Reville.
Very loosely based on a novel by Dale Collins, Rich and Strange blends the farcical humour Hitchcock had in spades with darkly tragic downturns. A couple wanting to see the world are granted this wish by the man’s uncle, unaware that this journey across the globe will stress and strain their relationship to breaking point.
After a run of successes, Rich and Strange was a critical and commercial flop. The film does have its moments of fun, mostly during the opening few scenes, but they don’t hit the mark as they should, and Hitchcock doesn’t take advantage of the film’s many dialogue-free moments.
Joan Barry (who dubbed Anny Ondra in Blackmail, and whom Hitchcock didn’t gel with) gives a few fun scenes, but for the most part it’s the tragedies that strike later on that are the really good parts. Relationships strained, and mortality under fire as their ship sinks, the dark desperation of the characters are the truly magical moments in the film; a farce turning into a funeral. It’s a shame that other moments don’t land as they should, because when the bleak moments come through it’s truly great early Hitchcock.
I think this might be your magnum opus! Personally I’d put The Trouble with Harry Higher, but hard to argue with many in your top 10, particularly the criminally underrated Shadow of a Doubt.
About the top half are films that if they appeared in the top 10 you’d find it hard to argue, annoyingly for someone trying to rank them.