My Year With Hitchcock: August

This year (2026), from January until December, I'll be watching every Alfred Hitchcock film I can find. This is similar to the viewing projects I did for Woody Allen in 2016 and Disney Animation in 2022. I'll be watching a different movie each week, in chronological order and reviewing them as I go. The rule for the reviews is that I cannot reference any movie I have not yet watched. They don't exist yet. Each film is reviewed as if it were brand new (sort of). The only difference this time is that I have to watch two movies a week in January and February, since there are more than 52 movies to watch (plus TV stuff later on). Reviews will also be posted on my Letterbox'd page. 

WEEK 31

Notorious (1946) - 103 min.

Watched on 

Availability: Criterion Blu-ray

The magic Hollywood formula that Hitchcock had been chasing since he landed on our shores–A-list actors, tight script, a story that would dazzle and delight–finally came to fruition with “Notorious.” Yes, “Rebecca” won Hitchcock serious acclaim and an Oscar nomination (and was his best film up to that point), but “Notorious” feels like a Hitchcock film that only Hitchcock could have made without interference. The strength of the filmmaking, the writing and the performances just leaps off the screen with confidence that everyone is doing their best work at this moment. 

Just watch Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in those first few scenes. They’re not even in love yet, but there is serious chemistry brewing. He sits in the shadows watching her as she drunkenly hosts this get-together and she has no idea who he is, but doesn’t mind him being there. And Hitchcock knows he has caught some serious lightning in a bottle with these two leads and lingers on their faces for so many shots. These are two impossibly gorgeous people who are never about their looks or their charisma, but about who they are and how that complicates the romance and the intrigue as the plot develops.

Ben Hecht’s screenplay masterfully draws us into these two people’s lives without resorting to any cliches or forced banter. Both characters are richly drawn. Bergman spends much of the film trying to drink away her demons, while Grant wrestles with his feelings for her as a person and as a partner spy before he has to watch her marry someone else for the sake of the mission. We’re locked in on them the entire time through their whispers, knowing looks and the lingering knowledge that this might not all work out in the end. 

And Hitchcock gets to have some fun with the suspense as well, particularly an extended sequence involving a key to a cellar, but the suspense lingers throughout in many different ways. The silences, the interplay between Grant and Bergman and then, eventually, Claude Rains, and the supporting characters as well, particularly Leopoldine Konstantin, who plays Rains’ domineering mother. Hitchcock knows these characters and wants to make sure we know what’s at stake for each of them. 

This is a WWII spy thriller that isn’t so much about the politics (although one of my favorite lines comes from Bergman who says to her superiors, “You wave a flag with one hand, pick pockets with the other. That’s your patriotism”), but about the people involved in every detail of a plan and what the implications are when they accept their assignment. Hitchcock's assignment was to make the best kind of Hollywood product, a film featuring two exceptionally charismatic actors getting to tango with a top-notch screenplay and with a director who knows how to get the best out of everyone around him and delivering a classic love story for the ages.

WEEK 32

Memory of the Camps (1945-1980) 58 min. & 

The Paradine Case (1947) - 114 min.

Watched on 8/11/2026

Availability: Kino Lorber DVD

How does a master director follow-up and possibly top a masterpiece like “Notorious”? In Hitchcock’s case, making a movie so uninteresting, eventually the viewer just has to give up and not compare the two, which lets Hitchcock off the hook for whatever the next film will be. It’s not a bad theory to put into practice, except that an audience might actually pay money to see the lesser (much lesser) film and wonder, “what happened?” Well, David O. Selznick happened, of course, this time with his own screenplay. 

“The Paradine Case” feels like a return to no-form-whatsoever for Hitchcock, harkoning back to the days he made movies for the British Film Institute against his better interests, his boredom for the material plainly evident in every scene. He brings back Gregory Peck, who had a much more interesting role in “Spellbound,” no matter how hokey. Here, he is a boring attorney who inexplicably develops a romantic obsession over his client, the equally drab Alida Valli, with whom he has no chemistry. Why is he so passionate for her? His wife (Ann Todd) tells him to his face “you don’t really love her” and we agree, but for different reasons. She is giving him NOTHING, both as a character and Valli with her performance. 

So, we spend two hours waiting to see if she will be convicted and no one seems interested, except Peck’s character, because Selznick’s screenplay demands he be interested. Peck cannot pull it off. His indignation of her innocence is woefully underdeveloped, which ruins whatever suspense the film might have had. Even Charles Laughton, returning after he and Hitchcock’s disastrous collaboration on “Jamaica Inn,” slurs his lines and looks eternally bored. 

This is Hitchcock sleepwalking through a tired courtroom drama, with a score by Franz Waxman that works overtime trying to sell us on Peck’s passion and the non-existent tension. If nothing else, there are a few interesting performances, most notably Ethel Barrymore as Laughton’s wife. She got nominated for her performance here, but her screen time seems scant, it’s a wonder how she got remembered at all (most likely, the Selznick muscle helped at the time). “The Paradine Case” just doesn’t work, but it does function as a means to set Hitchcock free to explore what does excite him after this and without the burden of constant comparisons.

Memory Of the Camps (1945 - 1985) - It’s possible I saw this film in high school. I certainly remember seeing it, or something like it, in a classroom in the late ‘80s. Revisiting it for my year-long Hitchcock viewing project for completion sake, it adds an unexpected layer of admiration for the director. That he felt compelled to drop everything and document the horrors of the concentration camps so that we may all remember is a testament to his own humanity (in spite of his other numerous flaws) that people don’t associate with him. In the end, though, the trivia associated with this film remains, well, trivial. It’s a horrifying thing to watch, indeed, and the last thing you’ll be thinking about is “I wonder which stuff he shot?” It doesn’t matter. 

WEEK 33

Rope (1948) - 81 min.

Watched on 8/16/2026

Availability: Universal blu-ray set

“Rope” marks Hitchcock’s first color film (not counting the color tinting with some of his silent features) and a return to a confined setting he tried with “Lifeboat” just a few years prior. That film was more purposeful and with tensions escalating with one complication after another. “Rope” pretty much has one complication–the dead body in the trunk that will hopefully never be discovered–and we wait to see if anyone becomes suspicious of the two hosts, one of which appears to be a little on edge. 

But I still enjoy “Rope” today as much as I ever did when I first saw it back in the ‘80s. I knew it was a stunt film then, with its ten takes and that was part of the fun in watching it. I could tell even then, though, that Hitchcock tried to hide the cuts through unmotivated close-ups of black suit jackets as the camera awkwardly circled around a character. Oh, well. It was a damn good try. Like his two central characters, he tried to get away with something and hoped we wouldn't notice the flaws in the plan. 

As a film based on a play and one that he wanted to film in one continuous shot, it obviously feels like a play, but I would sooner take this over something like “Juno and the Paycock” or “The Paradine Case.” At least this one remains in Hitchcock’s wheelhouse of dark humor and muder, setting up a key bit of suspense and then having engaging actors populate the screen while we wait and wonder how this will all turn out in the end. The best moment is with the chest in the foreground as the maid, Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) cleans everything off as the others discuss where David might be. Hitchcock’s use of the foreground, background and off-screen voices complement the material and give it an added suspense that might have been missing from a theatrical production. 

As the gay-coded protagonists (maybe that’s the wrong word), John Dall (Brandon) and Farley Granger (Philip) wear their roles well as an ersatz Leopold and Loeb, who kill a college buddy just to see what it’s like and if they can get away with it. The first few minutes show Brandon going through the process of compartmentalization and denial by being flippant, until he cannot be any other way. Philip cannot even start the process. He’s stuck in guilt and fear and may never get out of it. Brandon sees murder as an artistic statement. Philip, now that the deed has been done, sees no worth in it at all. Then of course, we get the first use of James Stewart in a Hitchcock film, who becomes the voice of conscience. 

“Rope” may not be an all-time classic, but it is a breeze to sit through and it’s nice to see Hitchcock try something in real-time. While the party in the apartment itself only seems to last about 50 minutes, there is an effective use of the background cityscape as we watch the sunlight slowly fade to darkness as the noose tightens. It’s an experiment that might not have turned out the way he wanted, but he still made an entertaining quickie, which, coming in after the dreadful “The Paradine Case,” is a welcome relief.

WEEK 34

Under Capricorn (1949) - 117 min.

Watched on 8/21/2026 

Availability: Kino DVD checked out from library

The problem with committing yourself to a one-year binge of a master director’s work, and with strict parameters (one movie a week; movie must be watched and written about anytime between Friday and the following Thursday), is that your schedule can make it difficult to engage with a movie at a certain time. Thus, I had to schedule a viewing of “Under Capricorn,” and with a lot going on at the moment (and/or a lot on my mind), I found this a bit of a slog to get through. I genuinely don’t know if that’s me or the film, but I do know that historical costume dramas are enough of a hurdle for me most of the time, that having to sit through one while also worrying about my time management made it especially difficult. 

And now that I am in mid-August–7.5 months in–I am just so ready to be done with the ups and downs of Hitchcock’s filmography. “Under Capricorn” may, in fact, be a great movie. I cannot muster much enthusiasm for it, but I know it has undeniable qualities worth noting. The production is, of course, lovely, much of it taking place in one mansion in Sydney, Australia where there lives a baron and his wife, who are Irish ex-patriots and who may be guilty of murder back in their homeland (the husband, that is, chillingly played by Joseph Cotton). 

When his wife, Henriettta (Ingrid Bergman), enters the dining room, her disposition changes the axis of the entire film. We gradually find out what she has been coping with and how the past has crippled her ability to relate to others, thanks to Charles Adare (Michael Wilding), the cousin of the new town governor (Cecil Parker). Charles becomes the one man who might be able to lure Henrietta out of her darkness, as her husband continues to show very little in the way of warmth or compassion. It doesn’t help that the waitstaff employed is equally cold-hearted, particularly Milly (Margaret Leighton), the head maid who almost serves the same function as Judith Anderson’s character in “Rebecca,” the cold, dutiful housekeeper who knows where all the bodies are buried. 

It has been widely documented that Hitchcock had a kind of crush (obsession?) on Bergman during this time. She carries the film, each scene revealing more complex layers of her character. She also runs away with the third act with a one-take monologue that serves as a big twist. It is her film, ultimately, but Cotton and Wilding do well by her in keeping this love triangle interesting, though I definitely need a second viewing to see if there are any clues as to how exactly Cotton’s character might have convinced her to marry him in the first place. 

“Under Capricorn” has some good ingredients and a fine cast to make it a good film, but this is another one in this project where I’m not committed to how I ultimately feel about it. I can say I watched it, took notes, tried to admire it and dreaded having to write about it. Maybe this one’s just not for me.

WEEK 34

Stage Fright (1950) - 110 min.

Watched on 8/30/2026

Availability: DVD from Chicago Public Library

This is another case of me not caring one iota about the plot, but occasionally feeling engaged by certain performances on screen, one from Marlene Dietrich, the others by character actors just popping in. “Stage Fright” is Hitchcock going through some of the usual traditions he had been revisiting time and again throughout the previous two decades. We have the man on the run (Richard Todd), wrongfully accused of murder and a woman (Jane Wyman) who is helping him clear his name. We also have the use of theater and theatrical tricks as a means of trapping a killer. And of course, the abrupt ending, because what else more is there to say?

It’s not a failure. It’s certainly more interesting than “Under Capricorn.” It’s just a case of watching something and knowing we’ve been here one too many times. It does have some beautiful cinematography, particularly in the final sequence where Hitchcock gets to revel in his love of German expressionism. That last shot, with the spotlights on the floor, is also quite lovely, as much of the film is about artifice and playing a role you were never meant to play. So, Hitchcock is trying things here and using the camera in a way that shows he’s not trying to phone this one in. 

The film jumps right into the plot without giving us a sense of who anyone is yet. It’s hard to get a grip on who we should care about and why. This does a disservice to Jane Wyman, who is an interesting lead, but not an interesting character. Michael Wilding, as her other man of interest, is a dud here. Dietrich is well-suited for the role and gets to sing, but her song “The Laziest Gal In Town” will surely remind viewers of Madeline Khan’s unforgettable parody, “I’m Tired”, in “Blazing Saddles.” I do like Kay Walsh here, giving an icy performance as a blackmailer and Joyce Grenfell (billed as “Lovely Ducks”) brings some much-needed humor in her scene as a carnival barker. 

“Stage Fright” has moments, some from the cast, some from Hitchcock. It’s just not distinguishable from anything else. One should always keep in mind, though, that maybe the logic in returning to the old well at the time was a sound decision, since there was no home video or any other way for people to keep track of his conventions. Perhaps it made economical and professional sense to give the audience “another one of these,” since maybe people forgot that this is what he does and does best.