REAR WINDOW

(1954) Laid up with a broken leg in his two-bedroom apartment in the “low-rent district” of . . . the West Village (?!), news photographer James Stewart wiles away the sweaty summertime hours between visits from gal-with-her-eyes-on-marriage Grace Kelly by zeroing in, via telephoto lens, on the human comedy across his apartment courtyard — but, hey, what’s Raymond Burr up to? From a story by suspense titan Cornell Woolrich (aka William Irish), this is one of the Master’s greatest successes, not only an edge-of-your-chair (in Stewart’s case, wheelchair) entertainment but also a technical tour de force and a meditation on the voyeurism of both filmmaker and audience. Plus PSYCHO: THE TRAILER, the legendary five-minute preview, with Hitchcock himself squeamishly taking us on a tour of the Bates house.
FRI/SAT/SUN 1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:00
MON 1:00, 3:15

More information about REAR WINDOW

“A complex fable of voyeurism” – David Denby, The New Yorker

“In an impressive oeuvre, Rear Window is arguably Hitchcock’s most exquisitely handcrafted feature.’
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

“Rear Window lovingly invests in suspense all through the film, banking it in our memory,
so that when the final payoff arrives, the whole film has been the thriller equivalent of foreplay.”
– Roger Ebert

THE LODGER

(1926) As the corpses of blondes pile up around London, cloaked stranger Ivor Novello arrives in the fog pointing at the sign “Rooms to Let.” Could he be...? Starting with a close-up of a screaming woman, with low-angle shooting through a glass ceiling, this was described as “the first true Hitchcock film” by the Master himself — complete with first cameo. Print courtesy British Film Institute.
7:40*
*LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER

“A remarkable film, with Hitchcock at his most ‘innovative,’ shooting through plate-glass floors
and generally one-upping the expressionist clichés of the period.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“The finest German Expressionist film ever to come out of a British studio.”
– Thomas Moran, The New York Sun

BLACKMAIL

(1929) After Anny Ondra’s aborted tryst with won’t-take-no-for-an-answer Cyril Ritchard leads to sharp-edged mayhem, her Scotland Yard boyfriend leads the investigation, and every word around her family dinner table seems to be “knife.” Hitchcock’s first sound film had Czech Ondra lip-synching a veddy British actress just off-camera. See the alternate silent version on January 12th.
5:30, 9:30

• BLACKMAIL: comparison of the silent & sound versions

SABOTAGE

(1936) As London blacks out, Oscar Homolka calmly walks home and washes some sand off his hands. “What’s it like to be married to a saboteur?” might be the theme, as Sylvia Sidney finds out while carving dinner. Classic sequence: the accidentally prolonged trip on a London double-decker with a bomb that’s ticking away.
1:00, 4:40, 8:20

“Ripe for reevaluation as the masterpiece of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period.
As harrowing as anything in Hitchcock, and it’s one of his few films to comment directly on the movies.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“One of the most playful of Hitchcock’s British thrillers… Allows Hitchcock to indulge in the sort of movie-movie self-consciousness of which he would become the object some 40 years on... even includes a telling screen-within-a-screen homage to Disney and the Silly Symphonies.”
– Paul Taylor, Time Out (London)

“This adaptation of Conrad’s The Secret Agent may be just about the best of his English thrillers.”
– Pauline Kael.

SABOTEUR

(1942) Robert Cummings uncovers a spy ring while on a cross-country lam from a phony sabotage rap. Among touches by co-scripter Dorothy Parker: the caravan of circus freaks; echt Hitchcock touch: saboteur Norman Lloyd’s smirking glance out of cab window establishing responsibility for the sinking of the Normandie. Rehearsal for North By Northwest, with spectacular Statue of Liberty climax.
2:35, 6:15, 9:55

“The Hitchcock film par excellence.” – David Shipman.

LIFEBOAT

(1944) Grand Hotel in miniature, as after a sinking at sea, spoiled journalist Tallulah Bankhead, left-wing seaman John Hodiak, right-wing mogul Henry Hull, et al. — plus mysterious Walter Slezak — find themselves in the title conveyance, with Hitchcock’s camera never moving outside the boat. From an original script by John Steinbeck, with the director’s most challenging cameo.
3:20, 7:30

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

(1940) Windmills turning against the wind, an assassination by camera amid a sea of rain-splashed umbrellas and a mid-ocean plane crash, as newspaperman Joel McCrea tangles with a spy ring in pre-war Europe, revealing the unlikeliest of traitors.
1:00, 5:15, 9:25

“Hitchcock’s espionage thriller is a thoroughly enjoyable affair, complete with some of his most memorable set pieces. Something of a predecessor of the picaresque chase thrillers like Saboteur and North by Northwest, its main source of suspense comes from the fact that little is what it seems to be: a camera hides an assassin’s gun, sails of a windmill conceal a sinister secret, and the sanctuary of Westminster Cathedral provides an opportunity for murder. Eminently watchable.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

“Immensely enjoyable.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

DECEMBER 16/17 FRI/SAT (2 FILMS FOR 1 ADMISSION)

THE LADY VANISHES

(1938) “Lady? What Lady?” mutter the bewildered passengers of a trans-continental train after Dame May Whitty disappears during Margaret Lockwood’s trip back from a Balkans vacation — but at least fellow passenger Michael Redgrave believes her.
2:45, 6:30, 10:15

“Directed with such skill and velocity that it has come to represent the very quintessence of screen suspense. It provides some of the finest examples of Hitchcock touches—little shocks and perversities of editing and detail.”
– Pauline Kael

“It still looks as fresh and funny as it must have done in 1938.
Compounded by Launder & Gilliat’s consistently witty dialogue and the all-round excellence of the cast. A sheer pleasure!”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out(London)

“This is vintage Hitchcock, with the pacing and superb editing that marked not only his 30s style but eventually every film that had any aspirations whatever to achieving suspense and rhythm. Masterful!”
– Don Druker, Chicago Reader

THE 39 STEPS

(1935) “What are the 39 Steps?” When a mysterious femme fatale falls murdered across Robert Donat’s bed, it’s time to head for the hills of Scotland, with cops, spies, and seemingly everybody else on the train hot on his trail — and those blasted handcuffs as an extra handicap! (But not so bad when it’s Madeleine Carroll you’re cuffed to.) The thriller that put Hitchcock on the international map and the prototype for all of his innocent-man-on-the-run movies.
1:00, 4:45, 8:30

“This suave, amusing spy melodrama is directed with so sure a touch that the suspense is charged with wit; it’s one of the best things that Hitchcock ever did. The lead Robert Donat, was that rarity among English actors: a performer with both personal warmth and professional skill.”
– Pauline Kael

“A ripping good yarn. Great fun!” – Geoff Brown, Time Out (London)

“Still stands in the forefront of his work.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

REBECCA

(1940) “Last night I dreamed I was in Manderlay again...” Gawkily naïve Joan Fontaine finds it’s tough being dominated by a dead woman, as after marrying romantically brooding blueblood Laurence Olivier, her predecessor’s maid (ominous Judith Anderson) keeps reminding her she’ll always be #2. Hitchcock’s only Best Picture winner (the award went to producer David O. Selznick).
SUN 1:00, 3:30, 6:00, 8:30
MON 1:00, 3:30

“Magnificent romantic-gothic corn, full of Alfred Hitchcock’s humor and inventiveness. Joan Fontaine gives one of her rare really fine performances—she makes her character’s shyness deeply charming.”
– Pauline Kael

“The supreme Hollywood entertainment package.” – Leslie Halliwell.

MURDER!

(1930) A rare Hitchcock whodunit, as Herbert Marshall (in his first talkie) battles fellow jurors over a girl’s innocence, then decides to solve the crime himself. The Wagner on the radio during the shaving scene came from a 30-piece orchestra just off-camera.
6:00, 10:10

THE RING

(1927) Carl Brisson’s “One-Round Jack” takes on all comers at the fair, but when Ian Hunter tries his luck, they have to bring out the never-before-used sign for round 2. A serpentine bracelet goes back and forth among the ensuing love triangle with a glass of champagne losing its bubbles a visual metaphor for bad news. Print courtesy British Film Institute.
8:00*
*LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER

SHADOW OF A DOUBT

(1943) As wealthy widows keep disappearing, Joseph Cotten’s lovable Uncle Charlie visits niece Teresa Wright’s “Young Charlie” in her very average middle American town. But when he starts whistling “The Merry Widow Waltz” . . . Often claimed as Hitchcock’s own favorite and perhaps his ultimate evocation of evil nestling among the pleasantly mundane.
1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:40, 9:50

“May or may not be Hitchcock’s great film, but it’s his most intimate and heart-wrenching.”
– David Denby, The New Yorker

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

(1959) “I’m an advertising man, not a red herring!”“Crop dustin’ where there ain’t no crops,” the art auction disruption/ escape, the Mount Rushmore duel, the train going into the tunnel: the classic Hitchcock set pieces just keep on coming as Cary Grant finds a simple case of mistaken identity snowballing into a breakneck chase across the country, menaced by James Mason and his two-man goon squad (including Martin Landau), and alternately aided, teased and thwarted by Eva Marie Saint’s double — or is she a triple? — agent.
WED 1:00, 3:30, 6:10, 8:45
THU 1:00, 3:35

“From the glossy ‘60s-style surface of Saul Bass’ credit sequence to Hitchcock’s almost audible chortle at his final phallic image, North by Northwest treads a bizarre tightrope between sex and repression, nightmarish thriller and urbane comedy.”
– Time Out (London)

• Saul Bass title sequence

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934)

(1934) On vacation in Switzerland, a death scene statement tips Leslie Banks and sharp-shooting Edna Best off to a London assassination scheme, and the action begins, complete with a child’s kidnapping, a deadly cantata, and a restaging of the “Siege of Sidney Street.” See Hitchcock’s own remake on December 25 and 26. Print courtesy British Film Institute.
7:40

THE SECRET AGENT

(1936) Shakespearean great John Gielgud essays espionage, aided by a raffish Peter Lorre, with disastrous results. Adapted from Ashenden, Somerset Maugham’s fictionalized memoirs of his own WWI spying..
6:00, 9:10

“Hitchcock at his very best: the fake funeral, the murder on the mountainside, the riverside café,
and the climax in a chocolate factory.”
– National Film Theatre notes

PSYCHO

(1960) “Mother’s not quite herself today.” After trysting with married lover John Gavin, Janet Leigh embezzles 40 grand and heads South of the Border, but stops for a rest at taxidermy buff Anthony Perkins’ Bates Motel, where guests check in, but... Hitchcock’s legendary blackly comic shocker vaulted its title into the non-Freudian mainstream and turned comfy shower stalls into places of terror — aided by Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking all-strings score. Plus Hitchcock in the original trailer for The Birds.
1:10, 3:10, 5:10, 7:10, 9:10

“All those who still get a chill every time they step into a hotel shower, say aye. That, you see, is the power of Psycho.”
- Salon.com

Links:

• The Terror Trap PSYCHO page
• Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut ... Sometimes You Don't
• DVD Savant - A restored scene
• Discussion group
• MovieForum.com
• Saul Bass site
• Caldwells top film list-Psycho
• Theme from PSYCHO - streaming RealAudio | download RealAudio (257 kB)

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956)

(1956) “Que sera, sera — whatever will be, will be,” warbles Doris Day (singing the only hit from a Hitchcock movie — and an Oscar winner to boot), but little does she know that a Marrakech vacation with hubby James Stewart will lead to kidnapping, murder, and a classically nerve-shredding race with a cymbalist — under composer Bernard Herrmann’s baton — in London’s Albert Hall.
1:00, 3:30, 6:00, 8:20

SUSPICION

(1941) “If you’re going to kill someone, do it simply.” Cary Grant’s first film for Hitchcock, here as the dream husband of Joan Fontaine (in Oscar-winning performance), until she discovers he’s indifferent, a liar, a spendthrift, and possibly even — wait, this is Cary Grant! — a murderer. Echt Hitchcock touch: the ominous light inside an otherwise innocent glass of milk.
3:10, 7:20

“A supreme example of Grant’s ability to be simultaneously charming and sinister.”
– Time Out (London)

SPELLBOUND

(1945) “Women make the best psychoanalysts until they fall in love. Then they make the best patients.” Psychiatrist — or is he? — Gregory Peck just can’t shake that darned amnesia, but then he’s got fellow shrink Ingrid Bergman to treat him. Salvador Dalí dream sequences and Miklos Rosza’s Oscar-winning score key classic Hitchcockian love/guilt tangle.
1:00, 5:10, 9:20

“Gregory Peck’s performance is a dry run for Tippi Hedren’s remarkable work in Marnie.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“He has managed to bring through a tense and exciting tale, a psychological thriller which is packed with lively suspense.”
– The New York Times

NOTORIOUS

(1946) Reluctant spy Ingrid Bergman complains “He wants to marry me” to lover/FBI contact Cary Grant, after Nazi fellow traveler Claude Rains falls a little too hard for her undercover activities. Painful sexual politics underscore the high tension set pieces of suspense.
1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

“Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is the most elegant expression of the master’s visual style, just as Vertigo is the fullest expression of his obsessions.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times

“Velvet smooth in dramatic action, sharp and sure in its characters and heavily charged with the intensity of warm emotional appeal. As a matter of fact, the distinction of Notorious as a film is the remarkable blend of love story with expert “thriller” that it represents.”
– The New York Times

“The most elegant expression of the Master’s visual style.” – Roger Ebert.

DIAL M FOR MURDER

(1954) Flat-broke husband Ray Milland, jealous of rich wife Grace Kelly’s friendship with Robert Cummings, plans the perfect murder. And, despite an errant pair of scissors, things look good until Inspector John Williams arrives . . . Given only a limited 3-D release, Hitchcock’s Dial M is rarely seen in its original double-system 3-D, most effectively used in the murder sequence, turning the viewer into a voyeuristic accomplice as only the Master could have planned.
1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:45

“The audience is made to break out in chilly bumps and the tension is drawn so tightly that one can almost feel it in the throat. It’s an ugly, gory encounter, one of the toughest Mr. H has ever staged.”
– The New York Times

• The New York Stereoscopic Society
• More information about DIAL M FOR MURDER

THE BIRDS

(1963) “The Birds is Coming!” Bratty playgirl Tippi Hedren, after exchanging barbs with lawyer Rod Taylor in a Frisco pet shop, follows him to Bodega Bay, with a gift of — ulp! — lovebirds... and then nature turns. Hitchcock’s tour de force of terror from the mundane includes a barrage of optical tricks and a completely music-less track of electronic sounds supervised by Bernard Herrmann. From a story by Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca) and a screenplay by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain). EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION! Three original Hitchcock trailers, including his super-rare PSA for The Will Rogers Foundation!
1:00, 3:20, 5:40, 8:00, 10:20

“Making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature’s most innocent creatures and one of man’s most melodious friends, Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles of the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.”
– The New York Times

“Enough to make you kick the next pigeon you come across.” – Judith Crist.

• The Terror Trap THE BIRDS Page
• Andy's Movie Quote Page: The Birds
• Bodega Bay Online
• Classic Movies (1939-1969)
• Northern California Movies: The Birds

TORN CURTAIN

(1966) Distraught Julie Andrews follows atomic scientist husband Paul Newman as he defects behind the Iron Curtain — or does he? Memorable sequences include an extended chase by bus and one of the most prolonged murder scenes ever shown on screen.
1:10, 3:40, 7:00, 9:30

“I thought it was time to show that it was very difficult, very painful,
and it takes a long time to kill a man.”
– Hitchcock.

THE WRONG MAN

(1957) Returning at dawn to Jackson Heights, Stork Club bass player Henry Fonda finds himself trapped in a classic mistaken-identity case. Shot in ruthlessly restrained semi-doc style on the locations of the actual case, with harrowing sequences of Fonda’s booking and arraignment, and memorable innocent-to-guilty dissolve.
1:00, 4:40, 8:20

“The closest Alfred Hitchcock ever came to making an art film. This is a highly personal and even religious expression of Hitchcock concerning the vicissitudes of fate, predicated on his lifelong fear that anyone can be wrongly accused of a crime and placed behind bars. The result, as Hitchcock himself warns in a prologue, isn’t a “Hitchcock picture” in the usual sense, but it’s still one of his most potent and memorable works from the 50s, his richest period.” br> - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

ROPE

(1948) Hitchcock’s boldest technical experiment ever, shot in a claustrophobic single set, as a murder by effete, thrill-seeking rich boys Farley Granger and John Dall (as characters based on the real-life Leopold and Loeb) is exposed by Professor James Stewart. Shot in continuously moving ten-minute takes, with mid-reel cuts cleverly masked, the entire film seems to be composed of only four shots (count ’em).
3:00, 6:40, 10:20

“Hitchcock liked to pretend that the film was an empty technical exercise, but it introduces the principal themes and motifs of the major period that would begin with Rear Window.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

MARNIE

(1964) What’s wealthy publisher Sean Connery to do when he finds employee Tippi Hedren is a compulsive klepto? Why, marry her, of course. But the real surprises start on the wedding night.
1:10, 3:40, 7:00, 9:30

“In his ladylike heroine, who changes her hairdo every time she cracks a safe,
Mr. Hitchcock has as provocative a character as he has ever created.”
- The New York Times

“As sour a vision of male-female interaction as Vertigo...
thrilling to watch, lush, cool and oddly moving.”
– Time Out (London).

VERTIGO

(1958) Acrophobic ex-cop James Stewart, hired to shadow seemingly death-obsessed Kim Novak, saves her from drowning in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, but not from a fall off a Mission steeple. But then he meets her again... or does he? One of the screen’s most wrenching treatments of loss and — in Stewart’s tormented performance — of sexual obsession.
2:00. 4:30, 7:00, 9:30

• Saul Bass title sequence

TO CATCH A THIEF

(1955) As jewel robberies proliferate in the south of France, les flics start to look into ex-cat burglar Cary Grant’s supposed “retirement,” but he’s more interested in fireworks over Cannes with fire-and-ice Grace Kelly. Perhaps Hitchcock’s most beautiful-to-look-at work, with ravishing Riviera locations in color, the two stars at their most glamorous, and a “zingy air of sophistication” (Pauline Kael).
SUN 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
MON 1:30, 3:30

YOUNG AND INNOCENT

(1937) Derrick de Marney, on the run for a crime he didn’t commit, is aided by the young Nova Pilbeam, but they’re almost trapped by a child’s game of blind man’s buff; with a memorable dolly over a crowded dance floor zeroing in on the villain’s twitching eyes.
5:30, 8:40

“A kind of ‘American Hitchcock film’ aheadof its time...
takes its place among the best films of the British period.”
– Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer.

DOWNHILL

(1927) Expelled from his school after being accused of theft, Ivor Novello (re-united with Hitchcock after The Lodger) goes down, down, down... with a location-shot London Underground station serving as the perfect metaphor. Print courtesy British Film Institute.
7:10*
*LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER

FRENZY

(1972) Down-on-his-luck ex-RAF man Jon Finch is on the run from accusations of being The Necktie Strangler, in Hitchcock’s return to London and to fiendish form, making us identify with the killer, even as he must retrieve evidence from a victim’s post- rigor mortis finger.
1:00, 3:20, 5:40, 8:00

“It’s delicious to watch Hitchcock using the camera. Not a shot is wasted. Hitchcock’s smacking his lips and rubbing his hands and delighting in his naughtiness.”
– Roger Ebert.

"Frenzy feels like a fresh start for the master, with shocking bits of violence in addition to his usual top-shelf suspense."
- San Francisco Examiner

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

(1951) Suave demento Robert Walker (“makes Norman Bates look positively well-adjusted” – Time Out London) offers to switch murders with tennis pro Farley Granger. Screenplay by Raymond Chandler.
WED 1:30, 5:10, 9:10** PLEASE NOTE CORRECTED SHOWTIMES**
**these times correct a typo on our printed calendar
THU 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 9:30
(†NOTE: PLAYS AS SINGLE FEATURE ON THU)

“A first-rate thriller with odd little kinks.” –Roger Ebert

“Intensely enjoyable — in some ways the best of Hitchcock’s American films.”
– Pauline Kael.

I CONFESS

(1953) Just another day at the office for Canadian priest Montgomery Clift as he takes the confession of murderer O.E. Hasse — only problem is, Hasse’s victim was blackmailing Clift over a pre-ordination love affair, and now guess who’s the top suspect? And then there’s that “seal of confession” to deal with.
WED ONLY AT 3:20, 7:10
(NO SCREENINGS ON THU)

BLACKMAIL (SILENT VERSION)

(1929) After Anny Ondra’s aborted tryst with won’t-take-no-for-an-answer Cyril Ritchard leads to sharp-edged mayhem, her Scotland Yard boyfriend leads the investigation, and every word around her family dinner table seems to be “knife.” Before it was re-shot as a talkie (see description, December 12), Hitchcock had completed this much rarer silent version. INTRODUCED BY BRIAN ROSE, PROFESSOR OF FILM AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY. LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER.
7:30

• BLACKMAIL: comparison of the silent & sound versions