Hitchcock was a somewhat prickly English gent who could eat huge quantities of food and probably did some nasty stuff to his blonde stars that would get him canceled in the present time. There are movies and all where people play Hitchcock, but I don’t think any biopic of the man could ever really be successful. The spectacular camera movement from balcony to the palm of Ingrid Bergman’s hand in Notorious, the lit tip of a cigarette in the dark of an apartment in Rear Window, or the gauzy green semi-ghost walking to Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. I think the birds on the jungle gym or the knife-wielding shadow behind the shower curtain would outstrip it, and even still there are more uncanny, strange pictures from his oeuvre which strike me more deeply. The crop duster behind Cary Grant in North by Northwest would be the most iconic image of almost any director’s milieu, and yet I’m not sure that it even qualifies as Hitchcock’s. I don’t think there’s another director whose most famous images are more familiar or more imitated than Hitchcock’s. Hitchcock is probably the most influential director of the sound era, a man who moved his camera and set up his stories with terrific panache. Why shouldn’t they? In another few months, we’ll finally find out if Vertigo will hold on to its title as the greatest movie of all time, per Sight and Sound Hitchcock is already only the third director to have made one of Sight and Sound’s greatest movies, and he can become the second after Welles to keep an entry there for more than one edition of the list. But for EW in 1996, MovieMaker in 2002, They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? in 2021, and Total Film in 2007: first overall. Parade put him third, behind Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. So did the people at Studiobinder in 2020 (to Kubrick) and at Empire in 2005 (to Spielberg). The critics put him second, behind Welles. In 2002, Sight and Sound polled directors and he came out fifth, placing behind Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and Francis Ford Coppola. I can tell you that out of sources that I find generally credible (even if I largely disagree with them), I haven’t been able to do so. Here’s a fun game to play: try to find a ranking of directors which doesn’t have Alfred Hitchcock in the top five.
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