Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked
5. Notorious (1946)
Developed over several years both with and without the help/annoyance of David Selznik, Notorious unites previous Hitchcock collaborators Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman for a thriller that went on to influence countless others, including Mission: Impossible II (which essentially stole the entire plot, and a few lines of dialogue).
Once again returning to the espionage thriller that Alfred Hitchcock was so well known for and adept at directing, the film follows Bergman’s Alice, daughter of a German war criminal, sent by the United States to infiltrate a group of her father’s old friends in Rio, including getting romantically close to an old friend, Alex Sebastian (played by Claude Rains).
Deftly managing both the spy thriller and romance narrative, all of Hitchcock’s skills are on full display. Despite being a fairly serious and tense film, there are still a few moments of humour, including a drunk Alice and sarcastic Devlin (Grant) at the film’s beginning. And throughout the film we’re treated to some of cinema’s most incredible sequences, including the famous wine cellar sequence, beginning with a glorious long shot traversing several floors and a great hallway lobby to end on a close-up of a key held in Bergman’s hand. The ending is sombre and moody, muted but all the more powerful for it.
Years later, Bergman would present Hitchcock with that same key from the film, as she’d stolen it from the set after filming. That she held so much attachment for such a small film prop aligns well with Roger Ebert’s feelings that Notorious is one of the Master of Suspense’s greatest films. One would be hard-pressed to disagree.
4. Rear Window (1954)
The second outing for James Stewart in an Alfred Hitchcock picture, and the second for Grace Kelly too (coming just months after Dial M for Murder), Rear Window is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s limited-location thrillers, and certainly his best.
With a broken leg, wheelchair-bound photographer Jeffries (Stewart) spends most of his waking time spying on his apartment-block neighbours and wondering whether he should marry his affluent girlfriend, Lisa (Kelly). That is, until something else comes along to take his mind off the dilemma; the idea that one of his neighbours might just have killed his wife.
Rear Window has influenced generations, and any time there’s a new ‘my neighbour is a serial killer’ story, we always go back to Hitchcock for setting the trend.
Stewart and Kelly are a gloriously dynamic couple in two of the best roles of their careers. The direction is beautiful, with long swathes of silence implemented perfectly to keep the tension mounting. This, when combined with perfect storytelling beats, withholding of information at crucial points, and general paranoia, shows off Hitchcock’s skills as a superb storyteller when he finds a film that really works for him.
Despite all but a few shots being taken from inside an apartment, Rope remains fresh and new and interesting throughout. Even though the first half an hour is just an argument over whether to marry Grace Kelly, it’s still marvellously entertaining.
A breathtaking final half hour caps it all off, and gives us one of the greatest thrillers, nay, one of the greatest films, of all time.
3. Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is the film that toppled Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane as Sight and Sound’s best film ever made in the magazine’s 2012 poll (a list organised by the votes of industry professionals, academics and critics).
The fourth and final collaboration between Hitchcock and James Stewart has Stewart playing Scottie, a former police detective laid off the force after a severe attack of acrophobia and vertigo leads to the death of a fellow officer. Hired by an old friend to follow his wife, he is dragged into a strange world where the boundaries between real and illusion, dead and alive, and love and lust are blurred in a surreal thriller for the ages.
Upon release, most critical responses were mixed at best. Over time, however, people have come to regard Vertigo in a vastly different light.
Employing an array of traditional Hitchcock trademarks (such as the Hitchcock blonde, the thriller, gorgeous cinematography, surreal dream-like sequences), the tale of Scottie and Madeline leads us through a twisting, turning, dark labyrinth of a film that slowly seeps under the skin as it gets further and further off the beaten path. With innovations in camera techniques (the reverse-tracking shot/dolly zoom often being named the ‘Vertigo shot’ after its prominent use in the film), surrealist nightmare sequences, and a masterful score from Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock weaves an impossibly beautiful yet dark film out of what could have otherwise been a simple murder mystery.
James Stewart’s Scottie truly captures the horrific heart of love and loss, and Kim Novak is both haunted and haunting. All aspects of filmmaking come together to make Vertigo a film that never truly leaves you.
Many films are described as ‘once seen, never forgotten’, but this film, one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, truly earns the phrase.
2. North by Northwest (1959)
Some films manage to sum up a director’s entire work, even if you are to take the controversial subject of auteur theory out of the equation. North by Northwest is one of those films. It brings together all the elements of Hitchcock in one outrageous 2-hour blockbuster event.
With Cary Grant mistaken by a shadowy organisation for a secret government agent on their tail, he must flee across the country, pursued by the police and brutish henchmen, to try and solve the mystery and clear his name.
It’s a who’s-who of Hitchcock tropes, and glorious for it. Wrong man? Check. Hitchcock Blonde? Check. Humour even in a thriller? Check. MacGuffin? Tick it off the list. Big, national monument set-piece finale? What else could we expect?
Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason, are sublime in their roles. The set pieces are massive, sometimes ridiculous, but always thrilling and entertaining. The jokes land, the dialogue is sharp and witty, the suit is iconic.
The blueprint for the film versions of Ian Flemming’s James Bond films to come, North by Northwest succeeds because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It knows it’s there to have a laugh, to be entertaining as well as offer edge-of-your-seat thrills, and Hitchcock knows how to direct a film that delivers exactly what is needed.
North by Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most fun movies, and it’s made with such style and wonder that it blows almost everything else out of the water. Almost.
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1. Psycho (1960)
Psycho is the ultimate thriller. It is one of the forefathers of the slasher film. It is a four-time Oscar nominee. It features one of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema. It utilises a score often imitated. This film is the reason people are scared of showers with curtains. When modern audiences think of the great Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho is the film that is at the forefront of minds.
Based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, there’s a Hitchcock blonde in distress, a murderer on the hill, and all the class and poise and correctness of a master at work.
Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) isn’t happy with her life, sneaking off at lunchtimes to get an hour in a motel with her boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), whenever he’s in town. Given the task to take $40,000 in cash to the bank (now over $300,000 accounting for inflation), she decides to take the money and run to Sam across the country to start a new life. Caught in a rainstorm, Marion pulls up to the now-famous Bates Motel, and finds a private trap that she might never get out of alive.
Some might disagree that Psycho is Hitchcock’s best film, perhaps pitching for Vertigo or Rear Window instead, but nobody would be bewildered by why it is in this slot.
Every department shifts all its weight to deliver a thriller that continues to keep the heart rate going like a runaway freight train to this day, over sixty years later. Every shot is methodically crafted, every edit purposeful, every nuance of every character exquisitely rendered. The twists and turns break all the conventions of cinema of the time, and the marketing physically changed cinema-going habits and codes of conduct to the modern day by not allowing people in after a certain time and forcing critics to go see the film on opening day to keep its twists as secret as possible. The six-minute trailer Hitchcock created is almost as good as the film itself.
Numerous sequels and prequels and television shows and biopics and references in other films can’t take away from what is as near a perfect film as has ever been made.
The one and only Psycho is the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock film. It is one of the most famous, influential, important, and best films of all time. You couldn’t ask for a better legacy.
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A list such as this, with so many undisputed all-time classics, cements the feeling that Hitchcock was one of cinema’s most monumental film directors. His legacy, of more than 50 feature films across more than half a century – each with their own qualities and moments of pure inspiration – has proven to be massively impactful. Hitchcock is, indisputably, one of the foundations of what we currently understand cinema to be, and one of the very greatest of all time.
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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.