Film Directors Mediagraphy - Alfred Hitchcock
updated (10/00)

The 39 steps [videorecording] / Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Thirty-nine steps. Yorba Linda, Calif. c1995. 1 videocassette (89 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Tale of a young Canadian man who is forced to flee both police and enemy agents after he is falsely accused of murdering an international spy found dead in his flat. He is chased across Scotland as he tries to uncover the secret organization that framed him and catch the real spies before they can take a defense secret out of England. VHS 49

The birds [videorecording] / Universal Pictures ; Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions. [Universal City, Calif.] . 1979. 1 videocassette (119 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. A small California town is attacked by thousands of birds. VHS 101

Blackmail [videorecording] / British International Pictures ; Gainsborough Pictures. New York, N.Y. : Crown Video, [198-?]. Crown movie classics. 1 videocassette (78 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. The first British sound film with dialogue. A girl stabs an artist who has tried to rape her and her police detective boyfriend conceals his knowledge of her guilt. Victimized by a blackmailer, they call his bluff, and after a chase through the British Museum, he falls to his death from a roof. VHS 300

Camera [videorecording] / Janus Films. Art of the impossible. Northbrook, Ill. : Coronet Films & Video; [1979?] The Art of Film ; v. 2 (First series). 1 videocassette (20 min.) : sd., b&w with col. ; 1/2 in. Presents key excerpts from the world's great film masterpieces to illustrate and clarify both the fundamental aspects and the range of the art of the cinema. Examples drawn from classic films include: Beauty and the beast (Jean Cocteau); Two English girls (Francois Truffaut); The rocking horse winner (Francois Truffaut); The lady vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock); The most dangerous game (Alfred Hitchcock); The silence (Ingmar Bergman); Shadows of forgotten ancestors ( Sergei Parajonov). VHS 1237

Dial M for murder [videorecording] / Warner Brothers. New York : Warner Home Video, 1982. Night at the movies ; 1954. 1 videocassette (123 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. In a love triangle, the husband plots to murder his wife who overhears the murder being planned when her telephone lines get crossed but she doesn't realize she is the intended victim. VHS 94

Family plot [videorecording] / Universal Pictures. Universal City, Calif. c1986. 1 videocassette (121 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. A cabbie and a psychic team up to find a dead man in exchange for a $10,000 reward. In the process they become entangled with a larcenous jewel merchant and his beautiful "woman in black." VHS 331

Foreign correspondent [videorecording] / United Artists ; Walter Wanger Productions, Inc. Stamford, CT . 1985. 1 videocassette (120 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. A naive reporter (McCrea) is dispatched to Europe on the eve of World War II. While covering a pacifist conference in London, he becomes romantically involved with the daughter of the group's founder, and befriends an elderly diplomat who holds the secret of peace. When the diplomat disappears, the reporter stumbles onto the bloody trail of a major Nazi spy ring -- and his future father-in-law may be the leader! VHS 323 and VDD 108

Frenzy [videorecording] / Universal Pictures Limited. Universal City, Calif. c1986. 1 videocassette (116 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. In their hunt for a sex criminal known as the Necktie Murderer, the London police suspect an innocent man, who eludes them and proves his innocence by finding the real murderer. VHS 326

Hitchcock [sound recording]. Washington, D.C. : WAMU, American University, 1999. Public Interest (Radio program). sound cassette : analog, 1 7/8 ips, stereo. "Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock revolutionized "thriller" movies, mastering the art of audience manipulation and screen tension. On the hundreth anniversary of his birth, Kathy takes a look at the life and work of one of the world's most legendary filmmakers. Alverez, Max. Nnamdi, Kojo WAMU-FM (Radio Station : Washington, D.C.). Public Interest 8/13/99-2

I confess [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Burbank, Calif. 1985. 1 videocassette (95 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Film in which inner spiritual turmoil is contrasted with outer physical jeopardy. Father Logan, who embodies priestly piety, hears a murderer's confession. Almost immediately he is plunged into peril, for circumstantial evidence and eyewitness accounts point to a priest as the killer. Forbidden by the seal of confession to reveal what he knows, calamity and coincidence conspire to paint Logan into a hopeless corner where he must recognize and confess to himself his own human frailty. VHS 4373

Jamaica Inn [videorecording] / Mayflower Pictures ; a Pommer-Laughton production. New York . 1997. 1 videocassette (99 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. In the 19th century young Mary Yellen (Maureen O'Hara) arrives at Jamaica Inn near Cornwall after the death of her mother to stay with her uncle and aunt. The Inn, however, is a haven of smugglers and cutthroats led by Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Laughton) who lure incoming ships to a rocky inlet where they are dashed to pieces and then raided. An undercover officer joins the band with hopes of thwarting them, but they soon discover his real identity. VHS 4270

The lady vanishes [videorecording] / Gainsborough Pictures ; [Gaumont-British Films]. Los Angeles, Calif. c1985. 1 videocassette (95 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. En route back to England by train from Switzerland, Miss Floy (Dame May Whitty), a middle-aged governess, vanishes. Iris (Lockwood), a girl she has befriended, searches frantically for her amidst passengers who deny Miss Floy was ever there. A suspenseful and bizarre search ensues in which a conspiracy is revealed. VHS 320

Lifeboat [videorecording] / Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Farmington Hills, MI. 1988. 1 videocassette (97 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. When an American vessel is torpedoed during WWII, eight survivors find refuge in a tiny lifeboat. Hopelessly short on food and water, their situation is further complicated when they rescue a crew member from the very sub that sank their ship. Given the helm because he's the most capable sailor aboard, the passengers wonder if he is a savior steering them towards rescue, or their sworn enemy, delivering them into the arms of his fellow Nazis. VHS 341

The Lodger [videorecording] : a story of the London fog / Gainsborough Pictures. Story of the London fog. [Monroe, CT] : Video Yesterday, [1981?]. 1 videocassette (91 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. First film in which Hitchcock made his now traditional cameo appearance and also is the first film to display many of the characteristics which scholars today point to as representative of the Hitchcockian style. Based on a famous suspense novel, The Lodger presents the story of a family that rents a room to a mysterious stranger at the time when Jack the Ripper terrorized London. They begin to have the chilling suspicion that their boarder just might be the infamous mass murderer. VHS 411

The man who knew too much [videorecording] / Filwite Productions, Inc. ; Paramount Pictures. Universal City, Calif. : MCA Home Video, Inc., c1984. 1 videocassette (120 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. Story of an Englishman touring Morocco with his wife and child who accidentally becomes involved in an anarchist plot to assassinate a foreign diplomat in London. VHS 114

The man who knew too much [videorecording] / Gaumont International ; Gaumont-British Picture Corp. Los Angeles, Calif. c1985. 1 videocassette (75 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Suspense thriller concerning a British family on vacation in Switzerland who learn by accident that a spy ring is intending to assassinate a foreign political leader in London. Their young daughter is kidnapped in order to prevent the couple from notifying the authorities. The first internationally successful film for director Alfred Hitchcock, who remade this film twenty years later. VHS 340

Marnie [videorecording] / Universal Pictures ; Geoffrey-Stanley Productions. Universal City, CA . 1986. 1 videocassette (130 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. Marnie, a compulsive thief and liar is caught. Her captor impulsively marries the frigid, disturbed girl in an attempt to discover the reasons for her ongoing anti-social behavior. VHS 345

Murder [videorecording] / British International Pictures. New York : Crown Video, [198-?] Crown movie classics. 1 videocassette (92 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. An early Hitchcock thriller. A producer/director is selected to serve on a murder trial jury. He believes the accused, an aspiring actress, is innocent of the crime and takes it upon himself to find the real killer. VHS 347

North by Northwest [videorecording] / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. New York . c1983. 1 videocassette (136 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. Suspense film in which a suave Madison Avenue ad-man (Grant) is mistaken for a Federal intelligence man by foreign agents. When he is falsely implicated in a murder, he flees cross-country, followed by spies, counterspies, police, and a blond Mata Hari (Eva Marie Saint) who apparently is aiding the agents chasing him. The film ends with a mad scramble across the giant sculpted faces of Mount Rushmore. VHS 119 and VDD 17

Notorious [videorecording] / RKO Pictures ; Vanguard Film Productions ; a Selznick release. Livonia, Mich. c1988. 1 videocassette (101 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Tale of espionage and romance set in Brazil during World War II. The daughter of a convicted Nazi traitor becomes an American undercover agent in Rio di Janeiro. The woman (Bergman) marries a Nazi renegade (Rains) to Help the U.S. government, but finds herself falling in love with her contact (Grant). VHS 299

Psycho [videorecording] / Shamley Productions ; [distributed by] Paramount Pictures. [New York] . 1980. 1 videocassette (109 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Horror melodrama in which a woman disappears after spending the night in an isolated motel which adjoins an eerie Victorian mansion, inhabited by a disturbed young man and his mother. VHS 14 and DVD 77

Rear window [videorecording] / Paramount Pictures. Los Angeles . 1984. 1 videocassette (113 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. Jeff Jeffries (Stewart), a photographer with a broken leg, is confined to his apartment during a Greenwich Village heat wave. He takes up spying on his neighbors and suspects one of them, Lars Thorwald (Burr), of murdering his invalid wife and burying her body in a flower garden. He enlists his girlfriend (Kelly) and his nurse (Ritter) to Help him investigate. VHS 328 and VDD 210

Rebecca [videorecording] / Selznick International Pictures. Livionia, MI . c1988. 1 videocassette (132 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Hitchcock's first American film. A young bride (Fontaine) is brought by her new husband Maxim de Winter (Olivier) to his manor house in England. There she finds that the memory of her husband's first wife Rebecca is everywhere. She seems to cast a spell over the manor, leaving his new bride in danger of losing her sanity and finally, her life. VHS 298

Rich and strange [videorecording] / British International Pictures. [Chicago, Ill. : Facets Multimedia], [198-?]. 1 videocassette (101 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Film tells the story of a rich man who, in an attempt to get rid of his boredom, tries living different lifestyles with his wife. They take unending trips until finally they find themselves on a sinking ship. Their narrow escape brings them back to the realities of everyday life. VHS 400

Rope [videorecording] / Universal ; Transatlantic Pictures production ; Warner Bros. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. Universal City, Calif. : MCA Universal Home Video, c1995. Alfred Hitchcock collection. 1 videocassette (81 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. Two friends strangle a classmate and invite his family and mutual friends to dinner -- with the body stuffed inside the trunk for a buffet table. Their former teacher Rupert Cadell (Stewart) suspects wrongdoing and, before the night is out, he will discover how brutally his students have twisted his own academic theories. Inspired by the Leopold-Loeb murder. VHS 4430

Sabotage [videorecording] / British-Gaumont Picture Corp. Woman alone. Indianapolis, IN : Kartes Video Communications, c1984. Video film classics. 1 videocassette (76 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. VHS 312

Saboteur [videorecording] / Universal Pictures Corp. ; Frank Lloyd Productions. Universal City, CA : MCA Home Video, c1995. The Alfred Hitchcock collection. 1 videocassette (108 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is a Los Angles aircraft factory worker who witnesses his plant's firebombing by a Nazi agent. Unjustly accused of the crime, he must elude the police while he tries to unmask the real culprit. VHS 4449

Secret agent [videorecording] / Gaumont British Picture Corpn. Ltd. ; Rank Organisation. [United States] . 1988. 1 videocassette (84 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Set in Geneva during World War I, film is an espionage thriller seasoned with romance. Two British Intelligence agents pose as husband and wife in an attempt to eliminate an agent for the Central Powers. VHS 3172

Shadow of a doubt [videorecording] / Universal Pictures Company, Inc. Universal City, Calif. c1988. 1 videocassette (108 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Understated thriller about Uncle Charlie (Cotten) a beguiling murderer who travels from Philadelphia to California just one step ahead of the law. Once there he charms his unsuspecting family until Charlie (his niece and namesake) begins to suspect her uncle is hiding some terrible secret. Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899- Skirball, Jack H., b. 1896. McDonell, Gordon. Wilder, Thornton, 1897-1975. Benson, Sally, 1900-1972. Reville, Alma. Cotten, Joseph, 1905- Wright, Teresa, 1918- Carey, Macdonald. Collinge, Patricia, 1894-1974. Travers, Henry, 1874-1965. Ford, Wallace, 1898-1966. Cronyn, Hume. Tiomkin, Dimitri. MCA Inc. Universal Pictures Corporation. Skirball Productions. VHS 3404 and VDD 102

Spellbound [videorecording] / Selznick International Pictures. Livonia, Mich. c1988. 1 videocassette (111 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. When John Ballantine (Peck), the new director of an elite mental institution, turns out to be an imposter, an amnesiac and - just possibly - the murderer of the real director, a psychiatrist (Bergman) who has fallen in love with him sets out to discover his identity. VHS 342

Stage fright [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Burbank, Calif. : Warner Home Video, [1990]. 1 videocassette (110 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Hitchock turns a theatre into a bastion of darkness, deceit and dread. Drama student Eve Gill (Wyman) envisions the acting challenge of a lifetime in the desperate predicament of a boy friend Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd), being framed by a flamboyant stage star Charlotte Inwood (Dietrich) for her husband's murder. To prove Jonathan's innocence and Charlotte's guilt, Eve impersonates a maid and goes to work for Charlotte. For Eve, undercover work is like playing a game, but she's about to encounter other actors who are playing for keeps. VHS 4383

Strangers on a train [videorecording] / Warner Bros. Pictures. Burbank, Calif. c1987. 1 videocassette (101 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. A tennis star, Guy Haines (Granger), who hates his wife is approached on a train by a stranger, Bruno Anthony (Walker), who hates his father. Anthony offers a plan: each could kill the other's victim. No motive, no clue would link the two murders save the casual meeting of strangers on a train. Haines doesn't take the plan seriously, however, until his wife is suddenly murdered, and Anthony appears to demand that Haines keep his part of the bargain. VHS 317

Suspicion [videorecording] / RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. [Atlanta, Ga.] : Turner Entertainment Co., c1996. Turner classic movies. 1 videocassette (99 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. Terrifying web of suspicion is woven around a fragile young English bride in a classic suspense thriller. Joan Fontaine, in her Academy Award-winning performance, is the bride, a gently-reared heiress who fears she has married a murderer. Cary Grant, in the first of his enormously successful collaborations with Hitchcock, is the husband, a dashing ne'er-do-well with a penchant for the high life-and a bank account that's strictly low-life. VHS 4480

To catch a thief [videorecording] / Paramount Pictures Corporation. [Hollywood, Calif.] : Paramount Home Video, [1981?]. 1 videocassette (106 min.) : sd, col. ; 1/2 in. A retired American jewel thief living on the French Riviera seeks to prove his innocence by exposing the burglar who has been imitating his technique. VHS 105

Torn curtain [videorecording] / Universal Pictures. Universal City, Calif. 1983. 1 videocassette (125 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in. One of the recurring themes of Alfred Hitchcock's movies is the plight of a common, decent man caught in uncommon circumstances. Here, Prof. Michael Armstrong (Newman) is a world famous scientist who goes to an international congress of physics in Copenhagen with his fiancee/assistant Sarah Sherman (Julie Andrews). While there, she mistakenly picks up a message meant for him, and discovers that he is defecting to East Berlin in order to get funding for his pet project. Or is he? VHS 80

Vertigo [videorecording] / Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, Inc. and Paramount Pictures Corporation. Universal City, Calif. 1998. 1 videodisc (128 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in. Scottie Ferguson (Stewart), a San Francisco police detective, is forced to retire when a freak accident leaves him with a severe fear of heights. He becomes a private detective and is hired by a rich shipbuilder to follow his wife Madeleine (Novak) who is behaving suspiciously and might be planning suicide. Ferguson falls in love with her but she plunges to her death from a tall bell tower with Ferguson unable to take any action. Then he spots another woman who looks like Madeleine and he becomes obsessed in his desire to re-create her in another woman. DVD 14 and VDD 207 and VHS 60

The Wrong man [videorecording] / Warner Brothers ; First National Pictures. [Burbank, CA] : Warner Home Video, [c1989]. 1 videocassette (105 min.) : sd., b&w ; 1/2 in. An innocent man is arrested, jailed, and brought to trial for serious crimes committed by someone else who looks very much like him. As he struggles to prove his innocence, his life collapses around him. VHS 3170