Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked
40. Secret Agent (1936)
It’s 1936. The Nazi party is releasing films such as Triumph of the Will and Olympia, enforcing its control over the populous of Germany, and has become the enemy of the rest of the Western world. Enter Secret Agent, the third thriller in a row for Alfred Hitchcock, where the director reunites with Madeleine Carroll and Peter Lorre from previous films, along with a cast of new talent for a film of double-crossings, espionage in Europe, and another finale set on a train.
Secret Agent certainly has its moments. The dynamic between John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll, especially in their first scenes together, is spot on, and the addition of Peter Lorre’s quirky but hard General makes an entertaining main trio. Unfortunately, they can’t do much to make the script shine quite as much as they’d like, making a standard middle-of-the-line screenplay enjoyable but not necessarily interesting.
Hitchcock again shows his ability to blend the comedy of earlier scenes with stark bleakness in later moments, but even he can’t manage to quite bring about the brilliance of his previous two thrillers. Many of Hitchcock’s films around this period, and for the next ten years or so, have the ability to blend into each other. If it weren’t for the great performances, especially Lorre’s eccentric display, you’d be hard pressed to distinguish this one from some of his others. Secret Agent is fun but forgettable.
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39. Under Capricorn (1949)
Historical drama is a genre Hitchcock explored very infrequently. In 1949 he adapted Helen Simpson’s novel of 1800s Australian love to the screen. One of the major draws was to snag Ingrid Bergman, this time for the role of Henrietta, a rich businessman’s wife. Hitchcock later said that one of the reasons for making the film was to show off that he was such a name with such clout in Hollywood that he that could get Ingrid Bergman for his films. This is also not forgetting Joseph Cotton, star of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Hitchcock’s own Shadow of a Doubt.
Maybe these two were the only reason to make the film at all, along with continued experimentation with long takes, a carryover from his previous film, Rope, because almost nothing else is of value in the film.
Even when Hitchcock isn’t in his beloved thriller genre, he often manages to make the film outshine the material. Here, almost everything falls flat. It’s not badly directed – the costumes look wonderful, the Technicolor vibrant, the sets lavish – but it’s boring, with nothing much of interest happening until nearly the end. If you want to sit through two hours of talking and crying and photographs of people’s heads, then this might be the film for you. Aside from that, aside from completing filmographies, it’s best to forget this one exists.
38. I Confess (1953)
Montgomery Clift was one of the lost golden children of Hollywood’s 1940s and 50s. He died too young; he was a great talent taken too early. Here he puts his unique charisma behind the role of a priest, Father Michael Logan, who entered into the church after the horrors of the war changed his views on the world. One night, a potential blackmailer of a secret life before priesthood is killed nearby, and the killer comes to him and gives up the secret in confession. Now Father Logan must make the choice: does he keep his honoured word to not reveal anything said in confession, even when the finger of blame points to him, or does he break his oath?
The first ten minutes starts off great, with some nice camera shots and instant tension. The story is laid out within a few frames, and then… well, it starts to peter out, and although there are flashbacks and narratives and interlocking storylines and detectives and the police and a courtroom, nothing is incredibly interesting because we don’t feel the weight of the main moral issue. Only later on, in the last reel or so, does everything come to a head and we see what the film might have been. How is it that, in a film only 90 minutes long, there are only twenty minutes that really grip someone?
At least Clift is good in the role as innocence struggling with his soul. Almost everything else merely exists, and is competently made.
37. The Paradine Case (1937)
Back into the Alfred Hitchcock fold come Gregory Peck and Charles Laughton, two stunning actors of their time, for The Paradine Case, in which they team up with a great roster of supports including Ann Todd, Charles Coburn, and Ethel Barrymore in an Oscar-nominated role, to try and get something out of a courtroom noir drama.
Alida Valli’s Mrs Paradine is accused of murdering her blind husband, and it’s the job of Gregory Peck’s lawyer, Anthony Keane, to get her off the charge. Only she doesn’t seem to want his help, especially when all the evidence seems to point to their servant, Latour (Louis Jordan), whom she seems intent on protecting at all costs.
There’s a very good reason why this is one of the Hitchcock films you’ve hardly heard of; it is incredibly bland.
Half of the film is an investigative piece and the other a courtroom drama. An incredible depth of talent try to get anything out of this stagy novel adaptation, and they only just manage to do so. It’s impossible to watch The Paradine Case without feeling like the director is restrained by an incredibly talkative script. Why was this a Hitchcock film, and why did he waste his time with something so boring when he could have made something like the films to come on this list?
The Paradine Case isn’t utterly without credit, but it would have been far better on stage or radio. It’s just not visual, something Hitchcock always strived for.
36. The Ring (1927)
As with most of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, just because it’s low down in this ranked list doesn’t necessarily mean that the film is not good. This romantic sports film is one of Hitchcock’s best silent pictures, in fact, and one of the only films in which he has a screenwriting credit (and commonly thought to have been completely written by him, although Eliot Stannard, frequent Hitchcock silent collaborator, had a lot of input).
A love triangle develops between ‘One Round’ Jack, a boxer at a carnival, his lover Mabel, and professional boxer Bob. The suspicion of Mabel seeing Bob after beating Jack in a fight drives him on to challenge him to a final fight in the boxing ring, where the winner really does take all.
It’s not a typical Hitchcock suspense film, but there is tension in the straining relationship between Jack and Mabel, the sneaking behind backs, the paranoia of suspicion that someone’s devotions might not be fully focused on them. There are some nice visual flourishes, and the final fight scene is incredibly well crafted. Equally, there are some slower moments, and times when the film has to get through its setup, but when it hits halfway through, the whole picture begins to haul and never drops its guard. There will be better boxing films to come in the future, but The Ring certainly isn’t the worst of it niche, and it holds up reasonably well even in a new century.
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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.