Were he alive today, the Master of Suspense, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, would be 116. With over 50 films to his name spanning from silent films to talkies, black and white to colored, and in first Britain and then later America, Hitchcock was a true auteur. So many of the modern thriller and horror contraptions we’ve come to expect were devised by this brilliant man.  That frustrating mystery decoy, the MacGuffin, the hilarious—and rather meta—directorial cameo, and Hitch even discovered the appeal of the voyeuristic vantage point long before Bravo was shoving Real Housewives and Kardashians down our throats.

On his day of birth, we give thanks for a man who tapped into the very core of human nature, causing us to squeal, scream, gasp, jump, and “a-ha!” No one has raised hairs or provoked goosebumps as often or as well as the Master. And by way of thanks we’ve racked our brains and cast our votes to definitively rank the ten best films of Alfred Hitchcock. Whether you’re new to Hitch yourself or trying to decide how to introduce him best to your children, we say you start here. Just keep the lights on and prepare the edge of your seat, you’ll be sitting there a while.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s finest works is also one of his most spatially confined. The first in his oeuvre to be shot in color and most notable for its use of the one take illusion, Rope tells the story of two young intellectuals who strangle their friend to death and hide his body in a chest prior to hosting a dinner party in the very same room where the corpse lies. The act is deemed “an immaculate murder” by one of the men involved and the Master of Suspense stages the aftermath beautifully, setting the whole affair in one apartment unit. Every frame carries the tension of whether or not the conspirators will break and Arthur Laurents’ script playfully alludes to the increasingly apparent elephant in the room through dialogue that is both darkly comedic and slyly referential. The film is gripping in its “will they or won’t they be caught” premise, but Rope truly impresses with its nuanced navigation of homosexual subtext as well as the theme of theoretical principles being twisted into wicked, irreversible deeds. [Byron]

One of the few traditional horror movies in Hitchcock’s filmography, The Birds is the godfather of modern nature-run-amok films. Marred only by some now-dated special effects, the suspense sequences in The Birds hold up remarkably well, and the scene of the schoolchildren being attacked by the violent airborne creatures is especially unsettling. In the hands of anyone else, The Birds was bound to fail, but Hitchcock approached the subject matter with such seriousness that it manages to work almost in spite of itself. It may not be his best film, but it could very well be his most impressive. [Blair]

One of Hitchcock’s more twisted crime mysteries is in fact amazingly simplistic in its scope. A posh ex-tennis player, Tony, discovers his socialite wife, Margot, is having an affair with a writer, Mark, and plots to have her murdered. Using one of his signature techniques, the majority of the action takes place within Tony and Margot’s sitting room. Tony blackmails an old college acquaintance to do the murdering and in a hair-raising scene he sneaks into her house and attempts to strangle her. What none of them expect is that Margot has more fight in her than they imagined. As a filmed adaptation of a play, the stakes never feel all that high, but Hitch gets around this with his attention to detail. He lingers on objects and plays with our sentiments toward each character. It’s the perfect example of Hitchcock’s ability to carefully build a mystery and then piece by piece deconstruct it, and the process is a slow and simmering thrill to experience. [Ananda]

Notorious> is a film so pulsating with sexual tension, rich imagery, forbidden romance and drunken desire that it’s almost too much to handle; watch it in the right environment and you’re liable to burst. It’s one of Hitchcock’s finest works (his finest in my book), an international spy romance starring Ingrid Bergman in her greatest role alongside Casablanca. Matching her greatness is Cary Grant, a U.S. agent who recruits Bergman to infiltrate a spy ring in Rio de Janeiro and get intimate with its leader (Claude Rains). The love triangle that emerges is the best in movie history, full of innuendo and jealous glances, all framed by a plot so well constructed it rivals any of Hitchcock’s more popular classics (even Vertigo and Rear Window). Filmmaking doesn’t get more elegant than watching Grant and Bergman descend that grand staircase at the end of the film, and it doesn’t get steamier than watching them lock lips in what was, at the time, “the longest kiss in the history of movies.” [Bernard]

Perhaps Shadow Of A Doubt has become more famous for being Hitchcock’s personal favorite than for the sum of its parts, but that feels grossly unfair to what is, essentially, a masterpiece. When Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) announces a surprise visit to his family in the small town of Santa Rosa, his niece and namesake Charlotte “Charlie” (Teresa Wright) is ecstatic. However, it’s not long before she starts to suspect her uncle of being the “Merry Widow” serial killer, and the plot unravels in the kind of hair-raisingly suspenseful way that would later become synonymous with Alfred Hitchcock’s name. In a rare twist of classic Hollywood convention, the leading man in this picture ends up being one of Hitchcock’s most memorable villains. Boasting the most opulent cinematography of any Hitchcock film (by Joseph Valentine), ridiculously immersive characterization of a small family unit, and a supremely original male-female dynamic that inspired Cotten’s and Wright’s mesmerizing performances; it’s easy to see why Hitchcock loved it so much. That slow-burning close-up of Cotten describing widows as “wheezing animals” is everything. [Nik]

Hitchcock’s paranoia-fueled tale of a man trapped in his apartment with delusions of murderous neighbors is my all-time favorite of his works. Jimmy Stewart’s wheelchair-bound photographer Jeff is the vehicle through which Hitchcock traps his audience into forced suspense. Through Jeff’s camera lens, we watch his various neighbors, and through his journalistic inquisitiveness and voyeuristic nature we start to see the same suspicious signs he does. His, at first, hairbrained schemes of murder by his neighbor across the way (played with perfect intensity by Raymond Burr) become more and more plausible the longer he (and we) watch from the darkened window of his apartment. With the bustling sounds of New York City providing a sort of humming background, Jeff’s neighbors live out their lives through their windows like a puppet show for his amusement, but as the truth of the danger he puts himself in by prying becomes clearer, it is Jeff who becomes the puppet, confined to his one room stage, and the denouement of Rear Window is by far among the most uncomfortably riveting of Hitchcock’s career. [Ananda]

Hitchcock’s timeless tale of exchanging murders poses a question that we’ve all asked ourselves, and in the process truly shows off the director’s mastery. Hitchcock constantly found ways to make even his most villainous characters empathetic, and that’s precisely what makes Strangers on a Train such an immensely engaging film. Despite being an abhorrent, sociopathic murderer, Bruno Anthony is strangely charming. Robert Walker approaches the role brilliantly, opposite the criminally underrated Farley Granger, who plays a perfect patsy in the form of Guy Haines. Over sixty years and countless viewings later, Strangers on a Train remains one of the most suspenseful movies of all time. [Blair]

Mistaken identity was part of Hitchcock’s arsenal as early as 1935’s The 39 Steps, but it reached iconic heights (literally and figuratively) in 1959’s North By Northwest. New York ad-man Roger Thornhill (Master of Swag, Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent by villainous spy Philip Vandamm (a perfect James Mason), and finds himself running for his life cross-country whilst falling hard for Eva Marie Saint’s mysterious blonde beauty Eve Kendall. The film is infamous for its action scenes, especially a bamboozled Grant barely escaping from an evil crop-duster in the middle of nowhere, so it’s easy to overlook the sly sense of humor on constant display and one of the greatest screenplays Hitchcock ever directed (written by the legendary Ernest Lehman). Without a single frame wasted, and a kind of cinematic rhythm that holds the answer to defeating time itself, there’s no mistaking North by Northwest as one of the master’s very best. [Nik]

When we think about Psycho, we think of its iconic scenes. The infamous shower sequence. The shocking twist. That unsettling final inner monologue in which the audience stares directly into the face of evil. As undeniably memorable as those moments are, though, Psycho is notable for more than its permeation of popular culture. Beginning as a tale of a woman absconding with a bag of money, the film deftly transitions into a very different kind of story, centering on a young man, his mother, a motel and a trail of disappearances. With his intelligent use of editing (cleverly obscuring grotesqueries while still managing to disturb), a discerning eye for darkly connotative imagery and a perfectly paced progression of terror, Hitchcock took B-movie material and made it into art. A watershed moment in horror cinema and a catalyst for the modern slasher movie, Psycho legitimized the genre and remains a vastly influential work 55 years on. [Byron]

In the darkest corners of Hitchcock’s mind hid his deepest, wildest obsessions and fears; with Vertigo, he digs them out, slaps them together and forms with his hands the purest expression of his true self he’s ever shared with the world. It’s a pretty, prickly thing that sends you into a state of paranoid euphoria, lusting after its beauty as you drown in cold sweats. As we become more and more immersed in the headspace of Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie as he chases the spectre of the quintessential icy blonde (embodied by Kim Novak) around San Francisco, we are stepping into Hitch’s very own shoes. As in most of his stories, his leading man is his proxy, and the dizzying fever dream that is Scottie’s pursuit is his way of saying, “This is me. All of me.” It’s all there: his debilitating fear of the police; his manipulative relationship with women; his resentment of the real world and its cruelty. Hitchcock much preferred the world of dreams. In his greatest shot, Novak walks slowly toward Stewart in a lonely hotel room, wading through an otherworldly neon green light. The image is paralyzing. Hitchcock is known for being less than kind to his icy blondes, but in this moment, he feels her pain. Good filmmakers take you on a leisurely stroll through the garden of the mind; great filmmakers drag you through the brambles. By this measure, Hitch was the greatest. [Bernard]

From June 14-16 at San Francisco’s wonderful Castro Theatre, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will host the “Hitchcock 9”, a series of films from Hitchcock’s early days as a director in the silent era. The films have been beautifully restored and will be projected on the big screen with live music accompaniment by the acclaimed Mont Alto Motion Pcture Orchestra, Stephen Horne, and others.

Arguably the greatest director to make a movie, Alfred Hitchcock was a product of the silent film era, which he revered. Greats like Murnau, Dreyer, and Chaplin were masters at visual storytelling, and as far as Hitchcock was concerned, this was the medium at its pinnacle. When silent films were elbowed out by the “talkies”, Hitchcock was crushed, as the advent of sound compelled directors to demote visual storytelling below the novelty of the spoken word. Hitchcock referred to this new style of cinema as “filmed theater”, as these films had lost all visual technique and appeal.

Hitchcock, however, retained the sensibilities and discipline he learned from silent film, and applied them to all his work going forward. The nine films included in this festival are paramount to understanding what makes Hitch—and all movies, for that matter—tick.

In the spirit of the festival (and the reason we chose nine), we’re going to explore Hitchcock’s work with a couple of fun lists. We’re going to work backwards, starting here with our list of Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Talkie” Scenes, taking a look at scenes where he demonstrates he isn’t a snob and can shoot dialog as well! Next, we’ll take a look at Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” Scenes, in which he employs and builds on the tools he developed in the silents. These two lists only include films after the silent era. Finally, we’ll hit you with our coverage of this weekend’s Hitchcock 9.

Though Hitchcock held visual storytelling above everything and often treated actors (who he believed must be treated like cattle) and their performances as simply another filmmaking component—like sound or set design—he certainly let them shine when he thought it appropriate. These are our nine favorite scenes where Hitchcock embraced his actors’ gabbiness.

9 Best “Talkie” Scenes from Alfred Hitchcock

#9 — The Lady Vanishes (1938) — Zany Train

Hitchcock was a definite sucker for silly physical comedy (see the Frenzy truck scene, Family Plot runaway car scene). This scene, though not as talky as others on the list, stands out because the dialog is funny as hell and makes the scene better. Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are engaged in a hilariously choreographed “fight scene” over a pair of spectacles with a bulbous magician. They’re in a train car surrounded by an assortment of the magician’s things, like bunnies in a hat, birds, magic chests, and (funniest part) a life-sized cutout of the magician himself. As the two men scuffle on the ground, Lockwood worriedly bounces around them. “Don’t stand hopping about like a referee! Kick him! See if he’s got a false bottom!” commands Redgrave. The magician (naturally) escapes through the false bottom of his magic chest.

Favorite Quote: “Naughty naughty! That’s a very large nose for a very large pair of spectacles!”

Watch “Zany Train” scene: (skip to 7:45)

#8 — The 39 Steps (1935) — Hannay’s Babble

The 39 Steps has many scenes that blossom into better versions in it’s spiritual successor, North by Northwest, but its public speaking scene (echoed in NXNW by the auction scene) is still very good. Hannay (Robert Donat), on the run from a pack of pursuers, ducks into a random door off the street and is mistaken for a politician who is expected to make a speech at a political rally within moments. He takes this as an opportunity to, at least momentarily, evade the bad guys. Hannay takes the podium and uses his gift for gab and quick wit to dance around his complete ignorance of the issues of the evening. He addresses the congregation: “We’re going to discuss some topic. What shall it be?” A concerned citizen answers, “The idle rich!” to which Hannay cleverly responds, “That’s a bit of an old topic these days, especially for me, because I’m not rich and I’ve never been idle!” A master bullshitter.

Favorite Quote: “MacCrocodile.”

Watch “Hannay’s Babble” scene:

#7 — Strangers on a Train (1951) — I’ll Scratch Your Back…

Hitchcock has always been known to repeat himself in his works (the airplane scenes in North by Northwest and The 39 Steps, countless staircase scenes), and one of the most revisited scenes by the master is the oddly casual and detailed outlining of a hypothetical (?) murder. Perhaps the most eminent is this one, from the brilliant Strangers on a Train. “Wanna hear my idea for a perfect murder?” Robert Walker is as brazen as a child as he submits his macabre scenarios to the apprehensively dismissive Farley Granger, the other titular “stranger”. Walker relishes in his morbid fantasy while we identify (hopefully) with the more humane Granger, who is frightened by Walker’s enthusiasm.

Favorite Quote: “Your wife, my father. Criss-cross!”

Watch “I’ll Scratch Your Back…” scene:

#6 — North by Northwest (1959) — Auction Audible

Cary Grant, as the cosmopolitan wrong-man Roger O. Thornhill, is trapped at a bustling fine art auction, with goons blocking every exit. Out of options, his clever solution is to create mayhem. Hysterically, he begins making nonsensical bids on the valuable pieces: “13 dollars! That’s more than it’s worth!” The crowd begins to vibrate with annoyance, and Grant churns the chaos further: “How do we know it’s not a fake? It looks like a fake!”To which an irritated woman snips, “You’re no fake. You’re a genuine idiot!” “Thank you” replies Grant, pleased with his ingenuity. He hilariously knocks out a security guard, earning him a police escort out of the building. Cary Grant could do anything, and this is one of his finest and most endearing comedic performances.

Favorite Quote: “What took you so long?”—Grant, to the police officers.”

Watch “Auction Audible” scene:

#5 — Rope (1948) — Cat and Mouse

Rupert (James Stewart), in a state of shock, almost pleads with Brandon (John Dall): “Did you think you were God, Brandon? Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave!?” Brandon and Phillip (Farley Granger) have just hosted a party with the centerpiece being a chest containing their dead friend David (who they’ve freshly strangled). Strangely, they did it for the thrill, and they would have gotten away with it had it not been for their final party guest, the uber-intelligent Stewart. Granger’s neurotic paranoia explodes as Stewart begins to Sherlock their little scheme. “Cat and mouse, cat and mouse! But which is the cat and which is the mouse…” growls Granger. Stewart and Dall’s tug-of-war about the morality of a “superior race” is fascinating and was hotly relevant at the time. Stewart gets to show big emotion here, which fits nicely with Rope’s theater-esque presentation.

Favorite Quote: “If nothing else, a man should stand by his words, but you’ve given my words a meaning I’ve never dreamed of!”

Watch “Cat and Mouse” scene:

#4 — Shadow of a Doubt (1943) — Did He Just Say That?

When Uncle Charlie (played by Joseph Cotton, gifted with a classically evil face) sits with his sister’s family for a quaint, suburban, All-American dinner, he shatters the cheerful mood with a spit-take-worthy misogynistic tirade. We slowly zoom in on him as he pompously describes widows as “silly…useless…faded, fat, greedy women.” His good-hearted niece (Teresa Wright) defends the widows: “They’re alive! They’re human beings!” Cotton then, in a masterstroke by Hitchcock, looks straight at the camera and replies, “Are they?” Positively rattling. Uncle Charlie is one of the baddest baddies in Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and this is his moment. You can almost hear hundreds of moviegoers in 1943 collectively screaming “BOOOOOOOO!!!”

Favorite Quote: The whole dirty, rotten thing

Watch “Did He Just Say That?” scene:

#3 — Notorious (1946) — Heartbreak at the Races

An electric scene from my favorite Hitchcock film. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), an American daughter of a Nazi spy, has fallen for US government agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who is forced by his superiors to instruct her to seduce Alex Sebastian, one of her father’s old friends in order to obtain the [MacGuffin!]. They’re conflicted about the assignment, yet are too passive and stubborn to blow the mission and reveal their true feelings for one another, frustrating the both of them. In a (public) secret meeting at a crowded horse race, Bergman reports to Grant on her progress: “You can add Sebastian’s name to my list of playmates.” Grant viciously assures Bergman that her “loose” behavior doesn’t surprise him: “You almost had me believing…that a woman like you could…change her spots.” Bergman is heartbreaking as she hides her wet eyes behind her binoculars. Grant fights not to flinch as he suppresses his love.

Favorite Quote: “Dry your eyes, baby. It’s out of character.”

Watch “Heartbreak at the Races” scene: (skip to 8:10 for the scene)

#2 — Psycho (1960) — Dinner With Norman

Birds are a major motif in Psycho. In the most loquacious of the film’s numerous iconic scenes, our protagonist—Marion Crane from Phoenix—shares an unsettling dinner of sandwiches and milk in the Bates Motel back office with the schizoid mama’s boy Norman. The dynamic between Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins is as nimble as the stuffed birds on the walls once were, jumping from friendly to aggressive to empathetic to frightening, all seamlessly. Like magic, these two just click, giving performances of a lifetime. Hitchcock was often (unjustly) accused of mistreating his actors, but here he gives them his uninhibited trust. The funny thing is, despite these characters’ fates, they make a fleeting connection: “You’ve never had an empty moment in your whole life, have you?” says Perkins. Somberly, Leigh replies, “Only my share.”

Favorite Quote: “People always mean well. They cluck their thick tongues and shake their heads and suggest oh so very delicately…”

Watch “Dinner With Norman” scene:

#1 — North by Northwest (1959) — Sex on a Train

Eva Marie Saint is sex and seduction in the flesh sitting across from Cary Grant on the train in North by Northwest. This is one of the most suggestive, sexually charged scenes of dialog ever, especially considering the time period it belongs to. Marie Saint is thrilling in her bluntness: “It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started. You know what I mean?” “Yes, I know exactly what you mean” replies Grant, who is as in awe of her lustiness as we are. When she gently puckers her lips to blow out a lit match in Grant’s fingers, it’s time to put the kiddies to bed. These are two of the most attractive movie stars ever virtually eye-fucking each other. Hitchcock believed that sex scenes should have an element of suspense to them, and by the end of this one we’re so worked up we could explode.
Favorite Quote: “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

Watch “Sex on a Train” scene:

Check back soon for our list of Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” Scenes and be sure to come out to the Hitchcock 9 this weekend in San Francisco!