The Hayden Orpheum is showing 16 of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest movies in a mini festival, along with the Australian premiere of the new documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut by Kent Jones. The documentary is based on the audio recordings for the famous book of the same name, for which acclaimed French director François Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock for a week. Martin Scorsese and David Fincher are among the contemporary filmmakers who help explain the importance of Hitchcock in the documentary.
Here are three Hitchcock films not to miss:
Notorious (1946)
In this romantic thriller, Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is the daughter of a Nazi agent who is accused of committing treason in America. Commissioned by Devlin (Cary Grant), she flies the Rio to fraternise with her father’s former colleague Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), who is secretly working on an atomic bomb in his mansion.
Rear Window (1954)
The whole film takes place in the apartment bedroom of magazine photographer Jefferies (James Stewart), whose injury has left him boxed up in his room spying on his apartment neighbours. He witnesses a murder across the courtyard – or does he? – and ropes in his girlfriend (Grace Kelly) to help discover the truth. It’s a thrilling comedy that questions the morality of voyeurism, privacy and relationships.
Vertigo (1958)
Vertigo is considered by many as Hitchcock’s greatest film, but also the greatest film of all time by the British Film Institute (toppling Citizen Kane’s reign). It’s a macabre romance about a dangerous obsession and the treatment of women as objects of art. Scottie (James Stewart again) is a retired detective with a morbid fear of heights. When an old friend Elster (Tom Helmore) asks him to investigate his wife Madeleine’s (Kim Novak) apparent possession and suicidal tendencies, Scottie follows and falls in love with her, with dangerous repercussions.
Other films in the festival are:
Rebecca (1940) TIME OUT PICK!
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Saboteur (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Lifeboat (1944)
Spellbound (1945)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
I Confess (1953)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Wrong Man (1956)
North by Northwest (1959) TIME OUT PICK!
Psycho (1960) TIME OUT PICK!
The Birds (1963)