Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
Rear Window is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder. Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film stars James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr. It was screened at the 1954 Venice Film Festival.
Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell.
Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. Both the screenplay and the successful stage play on which it was based were written by English playwright Frederick Knott. The play premiered in 1952 on BBC Television, before being performed on stage in the same year in London's West End in June, and then New York's Broadway in October.
Cornell George Hopley Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer. He sometimes used the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley.
Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to film and television.
John Michael Hayes was an American screenwriter, who wrote four of Alfred Hitchcock's films in the 1950s.
I Confess is a 1953 American film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Montgomery Clift as Catholic priest Father Michael William Logan, Anne Baxter as Ruth Grandfort, and Karl Malden as Inspector Larrue.
The following is a partial list of unproduced Alfred Hitchcock projects, in roughly chronological order. During a career that spanned more than half a century, Alfred Hitchcock directed over fifty films, and worked on a number of others which never made it beyond the pre-production stage.
The Window is a 1949 American black-and-white film noir, based on the short story "The Boy Cried Murder" by Cornell Woolrich, about a lying boy who witnesses a killing but is not believed. The film, a critical success that was shot on location in New York City, was produced by Frederic Ullman Jr. for $210,000 but earned much more, making it a box-office hit for RKO Pictures. The film was directed by Ted Tetzlaff, who worked as a cinematographer on over 100 films, including another successful suspense film, Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946). For his performances in this film and in So Dear to My Heart, Bobby Driscoll was presented with a miniature Oscar statuette as the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949 at the 1950 Academy Awards ceremony.
Witness to Murder is a 1954 American film noir crime drama directed by Roy Rowland and starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, and Gary Merrill. While the film received moderately positive reviews, it ended up as an also-ran to Alfred Hitchcock's somewhat similar Rear Window, which opened less than a month later. The latter picture was a box-office hit.
Richard Franklin was an Australian film director.
Rear Window is a 1998 American made-for-television crime-drama thriller film directed by Jeff Bleckner. The teleplay by Larry Gross and Eric Overmyer is an updated adaptation of the classic 1954 film of the same name directed by Alfred Hitchcock which was based on the short story "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich. It was broadcast in the United States by ABC on November 22, 1998. It stars Christopher Reeve, Daryl Hannah, and Robert Forster. For his performance, Reeve was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Disturbia is a 2007 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and written by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth. Starring Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer and Carrie-Anne Moss, it is about a 17-year-old teenager named Kale Brecht, who is placed on house arrest for assaulting his school teacher and who spies on his neighbors, believing one of them is a serial killer.
Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that a successor copyright owner has the exclusive right to permit the creation and exploitation of derivative works, regardless of potentially conflicting agreements by prior copyright holders.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) was an English director and filmmaker. Popularly known as the "Master of Suspense" for his use of innovative film techniques in thrillers, Hitchcock started his career in the British film industry as a title designer and art director for a number of silent films during the early 1920s. His directorial debut was the 1925 release The Pleasure Garden. Hitchcock followed this with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, his first commercial and critical success. It featured many of the thematic elements his films would be known for, such as an innocent man on the run. It also featured the first of his famous cameo appearances. Two years later he directed Blackmail (1929) which was his first sound film. In 1935, Hitchcock directed The 39 Steps; three years later, he directed The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.
Alfred Hitchcock's films show an interesting tendency towards recurring themes and plot devices throughout his life as a director.
John Belton is Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Rutgers University. He is editor of the Film and Culture series at Columbia University Press and associate editor of SMPTE's Motion Imaging Journal. He earned his PhD from Harvard University, BA from Columbia University, and specializes in film history and cultural studies. Belton has served on the National Film Preservation Board, as chair of the Board of Editors of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and authored numerous books. In 2005/2006, he was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his study of the use of digital technology in the film industry.
Rope is a 1948 American psychological crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1929 play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton. The film was adapted by Hume Cronyn with a screenplay by Arthur Laurents.
I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes is a 1943 collection of five novellas by American crime writer Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym "William Irish". It includes one of Woolrich's most noted works, Nightmare.
