Alfred Hitchcock Films Ranked
20. The Wrong Man (1956)
The Wrong Man is a strange entry into the Alfred Hitchcock canon in that it was the only film based on true events.
Taking inspiration from a magazine article, the legendary Henry Fonda plays Manny Balestrero, a double bass player in a restaurant band, with a wife (Rose, played by Vera Miles) and two young boys. When trying to borrow money against his wife’s policy to pay for her dental work, one of the clerks seems to recognise him. Before he knows it he’s in police custody, accused of a series of hold-ups across the city, all the while proclaiming his innocence.
The ‘wrong man’ trope is a staple of Hitchcock’s, with this film being the ultimate example. The stark black-and-white photography gives the picture a gravitas needed for the subject matter; Hitchcock himself, by now a well-known fixture thanks to his presence on TV with his series ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, emerges at the film’s start in silhouette to address the tale’s true-to-life basis.
Vera Miles somehow manages to take the shine off even the great Henry Fonda, in what is arguably the best of her Hitchcock performances. The subject matter is interesting, it’s well shot and well-acted, but also quite a trudge at times, despite it not even hitting the 2-hour mark.
The Wrong Man is a great, offbeat entry into Hitchcock’s filmography; one that has a tendency to grow on you with repeated viewings.
19. Marnie (1964)
At some point, the Hitchcock Blonde had to have its final outing, and Marnie turned out to be that film.
Based on the novel by Winston Graham (famous for the “Poldark” books), Marnie puts Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren in the midst of a tale of theft, disguised identities, lust, and horrific, repressed backstories. With two wonderful performances at the front – Connery’s especially memorable coming off the back of his at-the-time recent James Bond fame (Dr No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963) were released the previous two years, and Goldfinger was released only a few months later) – you’d think there would be no way this couldn’t be a winner.
Marnie does have its glorious moments. Both leads have wonderful, spiteful chemistry on-screen, the costumes are perfect, and the suspense sequences are top of the range. When it’s in its mode of full-steam-ahead, it’s up there with the best. The film’s issue comes in its interlocking storylines that both fight for screentime and cause a middle act that is laborious. If they could all match and marry up somewhere, the whole thing would tick over like clockwork and everything world work, but it doesn’t.
Everyone pulls their weight and tries to wring everything they can from the script, but there’s only so much you can do when there’s a fundamental issue baked into the page. It’s a shame Marnie drags down at times, but it’s still a very worthwhile watch.
Recommended for you: Shot-for-Shot: Safe-Theft Scene in Hitchcock’s ‘Marnie’ (1964)
18. Family Plot (1976)
By the time Family Plot came around, Alfred Hitchcock had been directing feature films for over fifty years. He had made silents, comedies, musicals, horrors, thrillers, and everything in between. It seems fitting that his last film is almost a celebration of everything Alfred Hitchcock had ever offered.
Initially attracted to the film purely through its plot structure, Family Plot involves two couples, one with a side-hustle of faking seances and psychic powers, the other kidnappers exchanging their hostages for million-dollar jewels. The two plots slowly converge to a finale where everything comes to a head and dangerous secrets slip into the open.
It’s ten minutes too long, the ending is over with far too quickly, and the effects are getting a little stodgy, but Family Plot is incredibly fun, and has the sense of Alfred Hitchcock having a laugh with everything he has done.
You’ve got the blonde, the snarky couple, the Macguffin, a car out of control reminiscent of North by Northwest, a staircase featuring in the finale, lies and deception aplenty, and some little suspense scenes that work wonders. It has even got a score from the legendary John Williams.
The opening twenty minutes properly haul themselves along with great introductions to two of the sides of our triangle, and by the end of it, the film is charming even in its flaws. Hitchcock was in his mid-seventies when making the film, and in declining health – that he managed one of his most outrageous and entertaining hidden gems at this stage in his life is a testament to his creative vision and directorial instincts.
17. Jamaica Inn (1939)
Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense and murder and, on occasion, the macabre, loved practical jokes. He loved humour, he loved slapstick. His early years were comprised of making a number of them. On occasion, however, he made a film utterly devoid of any kind of light, right in the depths of the human abyss. One of these was Jamaica Inn, based off the novel by Daphne Du Maurier (the first of three adaptations of her works), with Maureen O’Hara, in one of her first film roles, stumbling into the Charles Laughton-run gang of smugglers, cut-throats, ship wreckers, and all-round villains.
One of Hitchcock’s most atmospheric pieces, the entire film is drenched in the wind and rain and salty air of the sea. It is incredibly dark and grim, filled with twists and turns and hangings and wrecks. No humour in sight, Hitchcock keeps the atmosphere suitably gothic and dreary, with shadowy figures around every corner.
Laughton pulls off one of his many career-defining roles, offering an incredible villain of horror and sociopathy.
Odd moments might lag a little, and the central pair seem to be together because the studios demanded a romance was present, but if you want one of the bleakest Hitchcock films he ever made, Jamaica Inn shows what he could do when he abandoned his humourous touches and went all in on the expressionist, evil atmosphere of the darkest parts of human civilisation.
16. The Lodger (1926)
1926 film The Lodger is the best of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent pictures, and the one that put him on the map. There’s an argument to be made that if it weren’t for The Lodger, we wouldn’t have Hitchcock’s career as we know it, and the rest of cinema history would be vastly different.
An adaptation of the 1913 Marie Belloc Lowndes novel, the film follows a family whose daughter becomes involved with a mysterious new lodger, whom they begin to suspect might just be a notorious serial killer.
The last five minutes or so, with a final twist, are cliched and dull and so completely a deus ex machina that it almost derails the whole story. But the story isn’t what makes the film work. It is Hitchcock’s burgeoning genius, his manipulation of edits with some stunning expressionist moments, and Ivor Novello’s charming but sinister appearance, that bring the film to life.
A shot through the ceiling showing Novello stalking his room (done by having him walk on a sheet of glass), and the gods-eye viewpoint of his hand descending the stair railing, are but two small reasons why the film has become as important and influential as it has.
If this had been Hitchcock’s only film, he might still have been regarded as a master.
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.