Hitchcock Fridays - my Hitchcock movie viewing project

I have a movie-watching project for the next few months - renewing my acquaintance with Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve been involved in a number of interesting recent online discussions of Hitchcock’s films, which caused me to check back on my movie viewing log. I was somewhat shocked to realise that I hadn’t seen any of Hitchcock’s movies for about twenty years.

My tastes in movies, and my views on movies, have changed a lot over those twenty years. I suspect that my responses to some of Hitch’s movies will be very different today. Twenty years ago I was well and truly under the Hitchcock spell. He was a genius and I was prepared to make excuses even for some of the lesser movies. I suspect that today I’ll approach his work with a much higher degree of scepticism.

I also realised that I have very strong views on some of his movies (particularly Suspicion, Notorious and Marnie) but it’s possible that those views are based on hazy or even inaccurate memories of the actual films. I’d also be interested to find out if I have more favourable (or possibly even less favourable) responses to some of the movies in the Hitchcock canon that even I at the height of my Hitchcock worship regarded as turkeys (movies like Topaz, Torn Curtain and Lifeboat).

I’m also hoping to see some of Hitchcock’s British movies in decent prints. I’ve seen almost all his early British movies but at the time I saw them they were only available in truly ghastly DVD releases. I’m especially keen to see Young and Innocent and the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much again.

There have been some great recent Hitchcock discussions at ahsweetmysteryblog and they have really re-awakened by Hitchcock obsession. And a review of Marnie has just appeared at the RealWeegieMidgetReviews blog.

I don’t know how long I’ll stick at this project but at the moment I’m enthusiastic. I might even have a Hitchcock Friday feature here in addition to my regular posts.

First cab off the rank is going to be Suspicion. I’ve always found that if you want to get into a knock-down, drag-out argument about a Hitchcock movie then Suspicion is the movie to pick.