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]

If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, I highly recommend you check out the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which will host the “Hitchcock 9”, a series of films from Hitchcock’s early days as a director in the silent era. These classics have been beautifully restored and will be projected on the big screen with live music. Silent films play a vital role in the history of cinema, and festivals like this are guaranteed to make all your future movie-going experiences richer!

In our first feature honoring the Hitchcock 9, we looked at 9 of the Best “Talkie” scenes from Hitchcock. With this feature we’re going to count down Hitchcock’s 9 Best “Silent” scenes. We chose to include only films made after the Hitchcock 9 to take a look at how he exhibited the tools and principles he learned and retained from the silent era in his later works. Though some of these scenes do have some dialog in them, it’s largely disposable and the scenes work purely because of the imagery and score. Using his vast visual vocabulary and some of cinema’s most unforgettable scores, Hitchcock plays us like Beethoven played his piano.

9 Best “Silent” Scenes from Alfred Hitchcock

#9 — Sabotage (1936) — Bus Bomb

This classic scene got a nice little “cameo” in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It’s an almost perfect example of Hitchcock doing what he does better than anybody—creating suspense. I say “almost” because, well…I’ll let the man explain for himself:

A boy is tasked with delivering a package which, unbeknownst to him, contains a bomb that will detonate within minutes. We’re aware of how much danger the boy is in (Hitchcock reminds us with cuts to various clocks), but he isn’t, which is a basic recipe for suspense. Other than the scene’s unsavory conclusion, it’s a classic example of Hitchcock pushing all the right buttons to get us to squirm in our seats.

Watch “Bus Bomb” scene:

#8 — Frenzy (1972) — Fingersnappin’

A serial killer has hidden one of his victims (a young woman) in a potato sack on a truck (Hitchcock was never big on practicality). Minutes later, he notices he’s missing his very distinctive (and incriminating) tie pin, which he realizes she must have snatched during the murder. He returns to the truck to search the mountain of sacks for the one containing the body, when the truck suddenly starts moving. Hilarity ensues! Hitchcock was a master at getting his audience to identify with his villains (see Strangers on a Train, Psycho) and this scene accomplishes this in the funniest fashion. The killer has difficulty wresting the pin from the corpse—he gets a cold dead foot in the face and even gets knocked on his ass a couple times. The body is stricken with rigor mortis, so the killer has to gruesomely break the poor girl’s fingers to pry his pin out of her cold dead hands. It’s like a morbid episode of Mr. Bean.

Watch “Fingersnappin” scene:

#7 — Rear Window (1954) — I See You, You See Me

The nightmare of a voyeur is for the person they’re snooping on to look straight back at them, and Hitchcock captures this vividly and thrillingly in Rear Window. James Stewart has been spying on his neighbors from his apartment window, and we peep along with him (an inventive use of Hitchcock’s patented “subjective” filmmaking). Grace Kelly invades the home of Raymond Burr, and we boil with helpless anxiety as Burr catches her in the act and gets violent. When Burr catches on to the plot and shoots an evil eye at Stewart (and us) it’s a terrifying shock. After countless shots of observing the neighbors from a god’s-eye-view, Burr’s stare feels like a knife in the gut. It’s a great Hitchcock moment.

Watch “I See You, You See Me” scene:

#6 — The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) — Assassination at Royal Albert Hall

Man, this one’s a beauty. It’s also truly “silent”—there’s not a word spoken, only Bernard Herrmann’s gorgeous rendition of “Storm Clouds Cantata”, the lifeblood of the scene. Every shot—of the massive Royal Albert Hall, its grinning, opulent guests, the sea of white that is the choir, and our heroes, Doris Day and James Stewart)—is goddamn pretty. They’re masterfully composed, full of life, perfectly sequenced, and the colors are a revelation. Though it’s easy to get lost in the glorious eye candy, there’s real tension to this scene, which is sold brilliantly by Day. The shot of Reggie Nadler pointing his gun at the screen is as “3-D” as any “3-D” movie to come out in the past ten years.

Watch “Assassination at Royal Albert Hall” scene:

#5 — Dial M for Murder (1954) — Death by Scissors

No matter how many times I see it, the telephone murder scene in Dial M For Murder is always suspenseful, always nail-bitingly delicious. This is Hitchcock at his sharpest—every beat is orchestrated perfectly. The editing is immaculate—each shot adds a new layer of suspense and gives the scene momentum. When the camera semi-circles around from Grace Kelly’s front to her back, then cuts to her front again revealing Robert Cummings standing behind her in strangle mode, it’s truly terrifying (even though we know Cummings has been there all along). Dimitri Tiomkin’s score is as effective as Hitchcock’s visuals.

Watch “Death by Scissors” scene:

#4 — The Birds (1963) — A Murder of Crows

Tippi Hedren is leisurely smoking a cigarette on a bench outside an elementary school, waiting for the children inside to be dismissed. Crows begin to gather on a jungle gym behind her. At first, we see only a few of them, but then we glance away and look again to see several more have appeared without a sound, seemingly out of nothing. We look away and back again and gasp in terror as their numbers are now so great they resemble a demonic, jet-black cloud clinging to the children’s playground. There’s no telling when they’ll strike, but they surely will. The scene is so alarming because of the context the sound provides—the only sound is the faint sound of the children inside singing a youthful tune, reminding us of the stakes.

Watch “A Murder of Crows” scene:

#3 — Vertigo (1958) — The Green Ghost

By the time we reach this scene in Vertigo, James Stewart’s whirlwind of obsession is at its most turbulent. As Kim Novak floats into the room as Madeline, drenched in that uneasy green light, time stands still. We lose our breath, at once in awe and frozen with fear. Stewart’s face is full of desperation, yearning, elation, and pain, a face he only ever used once. Novak is a stirring vision, a guaranteed heart-stopper. Hitchcock was sometimes criticized for his stiff, immobile camerawork, but he circles his camera around Stewart and Novak to create a remarkable image. As we circle, the hotel room around them magically melts away and they’re transported to the stables where they’ve kissed before, then back to the room again, all in one sensuous effects shot. No other Hitchcock scene gets under the skin quite like this one.

Watch “The Green Ghost” scene:

#2 — North by Northwest (1959) — Nowhere to Hide

What I love most about Hitchcock was his defiant nature. He loved to challenge cinematic conventions. He noticed that in the early days of film (especially in German cinema, of which he was a student) chase scenes were claustrophobic, typically set at night in dark alleyways with armed mysterious men in trench coats lurking around every shadowy turn. So what did Hitch do? He set his chase scene in North by Northwest in broad daylight, in a wide-open field, with the pursuer being a dangerously low-flying crop duster. Hitchcock was breaking the rules, chuckling to himself the whole way. This is Hitchcock at his most precise and virtuosic, a symphony of masterstrokes that adds up to one of the most iconic scenes in movie history, only second to…

Watch “Nowhere to Hide” scene:

#1 — Psycho (1960) — Nothing Like a Hot Shower After a Long Hard AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

It’s hard to think of a scene more watched, more beloved, more dissected, more memorable than this one. Its mark on movies and pop culture is indelible. The bracing imagery and staccato cuts are taken to another world by Bernard Herrmann’s thrashing strings. The first people who saw the scene in Psycho had their whole world flipped upside-down when their heroine (the stunning Janet Leigh) was cut to pieces only 45 minutes into the film. They screamed, jumped, ran in the aisles, and collectively thought “What the hell happens now?” They were conditioned to expect movies to play out a certain way. Hitchcock exploited this with Psycho, and because of this scene he was now free to take them to places they’d never been. He pulled an epic swerve on them, the clever devil. As I write this I have the scene playing on repeat in the background. Moments ago I was sinking my nose into my laptop, absorbed in typing this blather, and the strings hit out of nowhere and scared the shit out of me! It’s a dreadful sound. Somewhere out there, Hitch is still chuckling.

Watch “Nothing Like a Hot Shower After a Long Hard AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” scene:

Be sure to come out to the “Hitchcock 9” this weekend at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco!