 | This article possibly contains original research .(April 2023) |
English film director Alfred Hitchcock made cameo appearances in 40 of his films. They began during production of The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog when an actor failed to show up, and the director filled in for him.
The playful gesture became one of Hitchcock's trademarks, with fans making a sport of trying to spot his cameos. In his earliest appearances, he filled in as an obscure extra in crowds or walking through scenes in long camera shots. His later appearances became more prominent, such as when he turns to see Jane Wyman's disguise as she passes him in Stage Fright , and in stark silhouette in his final film Family Plot . [1] : 115 As a recurring theme, he would carry a musical instrument, like the double bass he wrestles onto the locomotive at the beginning of Strangers on a Train . His longest cameos are in Blackmail and Young and Innocent . [2] : 71
In his discussion with François Truffaut, Hitchcock called the gag "troublesome" because audience anticipation of his appearance had grown distracting. To keep the focus on the film, the director would get his cameo over in the first five minutes. [1] : 35
Hitchcock's cameos often signify an important moment, such as when the protagonist travels to the location where their ordeal will ensue. [2] : 73 The director also used his appearances to foreshadow or underscore the themes of the film. [3] The other major function of the cameos is as a metafictional device, harkening back to Elizabethan drama. In a kind of signature of authorship, Hitchcock is signaling to the audience that it is being manipulated by him. [4] [5]
| Title | Year | H:M[:S] | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Birds | 1963 | 0:02:18 | Leaving the pet shop with two of his own Sealyham terriers, Geoffrey and Stanley, as Tippi Hedren enters. [6] |
| Blackmail | 1929 | 0:10:25 | Being bothered by a small boy as he reads a book on the London Underground. This cameo is 19 seconds long. |
| Dial M for Murder | 1954 | 0:13:13 | On the left side in the class-reunion photo sitting at the same table near Swan and Wendice. |
| Easy Virtue | 1928 | 0:21:15 | Walking past a tennis court carrying a walking stick. |
| Family Plot | 1976 | 0:40:00 | In silhouette through the door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths. |
| Foreign Correspondent | 1940 | 0:12:44 | After Joel McCrea leaves his hotel, he is seen wearing a coat and hat and reading a newspaper. |
| Frenzy | 1972 | 0:02:24 | At the very end of the aerial shot of the opening credits, wearing a bowler hat and leaning on the riverside wall at the bottom left of the concluding long shot. About a minute later, in the centre of a crowd, the only one not applauding the speaker; and another minute later, right after the victim washes ashore, standing next to a grey-haired bearded man. |
| I Confess | 1953 | 0:01:33 | Crossing the top of a flight of steps. |
| The Lady Vanishes | 1938 | 1:32:31 | In Victoria Station, wearing a black coat, smoking a cigarette, and making a strange movement with his head. |
| Lifeboat | 1944 | 0:25:00 | In the "before" and "after" pictures in the newspaper ad for "Reduco Obesity Slayer". |
| The Lodger | 1927 | 0:04:44 | Sitting with his back to the camera at a desk in the newsroom. |
| 1:23:50 | In the mob scene next to Detective Joe, who is bearing the lodger's weight on the fence by holding his arms. (Disputed) [7] | ||
| The Man Who Knew Too Much | 1934 | 0:33:25 | Walking across a road in a dark trench coat as a bus passes. |
| The Man Who Knew Too Much | 1956 | 0:25:12 | As the McKennas watch the acrobats in the marketplace, Hitchcock appears at the left in a suit and puts his hands in his pockets. |
| Marnie | 1964 | 0:05:00 | Entering from the left of the hotel corridor after Tippi Hedren passes by. |
| Mr. & Mrs. Smith | 1941 | 0:42:57 | Passing Robert Montgomery in front of his building. |
| Murder! | 1930 | 0:59:45 | Walking past the house where the murder was committed with a female companion, at the end of Sir John's visit to the scene with Markham and his wife Lucy. |
| North by Northwest | 1959 | 0:02:09 | Missing a bus, just after his credit passes off screen during the opening title sequence. |
| Notorious | 1946 | 1:04:44 | At the big party in Claude Rains's mansion, drinking champagne and then quickly departing as Cary Grant enters. |
| Number Seventeen | 1932 | 0:51:25 | On the bus amongst other passengers, in a dark coat and hat, facing away, he bounces up and down; approx. four seconds. |
| The Paradine Case | 1947 | 0:38:00 | Leaving the train at a railway station, carrying a cello case. |
| Psycho | 1960 | 0:06:59 | Seen through an office window wearing a Stetson cowboy hat as Janet Leigh comes through the door. |
| Rear Window | 1954 | 0:26:12 | Winding the clock at the fireplace in the songwriter's apartment. |
| Rebecca | 1940 | 2:06:57 | The man wearing a bowler and topcoat with upturned collar that walks right to left behind Favell, played by George Sanders, and the policeman after Favell calls Mrs. Danvers. |
| Rope | 1948 | 0:01:51 | Just after Hitchcock's credit towards the end of the opening sequence, walking alongside a woman. |
| 0:55:00 | In the background as a red flashing neon sign of his trademark profile. | ||
| Sabotage | 1936 | 0:08:56 | Just after the lights come back on in front of the Bijou, looking up as he crosses in front of the crowd. |
| Saboteur | 1942 | 1:04:45 | Standing in front of "Cut Rate Drugs" as the saboteurs' car stops. |
| Shadow of a Doubt | 1943 | 0:16:27 | On the train to Santa Rosa, playing cards, his back to the camera; he has a full hand of spades. |
| Spellbound | 1945 | 0:39:01 | Coming out of an elevator at the Empire State Hotel, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette. |
| Stage Fright | 1950 | 0:39:49 | Turning to look back at Jane Wyman in her disguise as Marlene Dietrich's maid as she is rehearsing her cover. |
| Strangers on a Train | 1951 | 0:02:22 | On the cover of the book Farley Granger is reading. |
| 0:10:34 | Boarding a train with a double bass as Farley Granger gets off in his hometown. | ||
| Suspicion | 1941 | 0:03:25 | Walking a horse across the screen at the hunt meet. |
| 0:44:58 | Mailing a letter at the village postbox (long shot). | ||
| The 39 Steps | 1935 | 0:06:56 | The man littering by tossing a white cigarette box while the bus pulls up for Robert Donat and Lucie Mannheim to leave the theatre. |
| To Catch a Thief | 1955 | 0:09:40 | Sitting next to Cary Grant on the bus. |
| Topaz | 1969 | 0:32:27 | Being pushed in a wheelchair at the airport by a nurse. Hitchcock gets up from the chair, shakes hands with a man, and walks off to the right. |
| Torn Curtain | 1966 | 0:08:00 | Sitting in the Hotel d'Angleterre lobby with a baby on his knee. The music playing at this point is an adaptation of Funeral March of a Marionette , the theme for Alfred Hitchcock Presents |
| The Trouble with Harry | 1955 | 0:22:14 | Seen outside of the window—the man walking past the parked limousine of an old man who is looking at paintings. |
| Under Capricorn | 1949 | 0:02:11 | In the town square during new governor's speech with his back to the camera, wearing a blue coat and brown top hat. |
| 0:12:17 | One of three men on the steps of the Government House. | ||
| Vertigo | 1958 | 0:11:22 | In a grey suit walking across a street with a trumpet case. |
| The Wrong Man | 1956 | 0:00:18 | Seen in silhouette narrating the film's prologue. Donald Spoto's biography says that Hitchcock chose to make an explicit appearance in this film (rather than a cameo) to emphasize that, unlike his other movies, The Wrong Man was a true story about an actual person. |
| Young and Innocent | 1937 | 0:15:00 | Outside the courthouse main entrance as one of several reporters and journalists (he is holding a camera) as Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) walks out. |
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.
François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor and critic, widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. As a young man, he came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin, who hired him to write for his Cahiers du Cinéma. It was there that he became an exponent of the auteur theory, which said the director is the true author of the film. The 400 Blows (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of the New Wave. Truffaut supplied the story for another milestone of the movement, Breathless (1960), directed by his Cahiers colleague Jean-Luc Godard.
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.
Spellbound is a 1945 American psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Michael Chekhov. It follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a murderer. The film is based on the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Hilary Saint George Saunders and John Palmer.
To Catch a Thief is a 1955 American romantic thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from a screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on the 1952 novel of the same name by David Dodge. The film stars Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar who has to save his reformed reputation by catching an impostor preying on wealthy tourists on the French Riviera.
Notorious is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation.
Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in late 1950, and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951, starring Farley Granger, Ruth Roman and Robert Walker.
Lifeboat is a 1944 American survival film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story by John Steinbeck. It stars Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix, alongside Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee. The film is set entirely on a lifeboat launched from a freighter torpedoed and sunk by a Nazi U-boat.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a 1927 British silent thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June Tripp, Malcolm Keen and Ivor Novello. Hitchcock's third feature film, it was released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes and the play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes. Its plot concerns the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer in London.
Day for Night is a 1973 romantic comedy-drama film co-written and directed by François Truffaut. The metafictional and self-reflexive film chronicles the troubled production of a melodrama, and the various personal and professional challenges of the cast and crew. It stars Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Truffaut himself.
The New Wave, also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.
The Mountain Eagle is a 1926 silent film, and Alfred Hitchcock's second as director, following The Pleasure Garden. The film, a romantic drama set in Kentucky, is about a widower who jealously competes with his crippled son and a man he loathes over the affections of a schoolteacher. The film was mostly produced at the Emelka Film studios in Munich, Germany in autumn of 1925, with exterior scenes shot in the village of Obergurgl in the State of Tyrol, Austria. Production was plagued with problems, including the destruction of a village roof and Hitchcock experiencing altitude sickness. Due to producing the film in Germany, Hitchcock had more directorial freedom than he would have had in England, and he was influenced by German cinematic style and technique.
Saboteur is a 1942 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd.
Waltzes from Vienna is a 1934 British biographical film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, sometimes known as Strauss' Great Waltz. It was part of the cycle of operetta films made in Britain during the 1930s.
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1956 American mystery thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Doris Day. It is Hitchcock's second film using this title, following his own 1934 film of the same name but featuring a significantly altered plot and script.
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 Green Room is a 1978 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, based on the 1895 short story "The Altar of the Dead" by Henry James, in which a man becomes obsessed with the dead people in his life and builds a memorial to them. It is also based on two other works by James: the 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle and the 1896 short story "The Way It Came". It was Truffaut's seventeenth feature film as a director and the third and last of his own films in which he acted in a leading role. It stars Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dasté and Patrick Maléon.
Alfred Hitchcock's films show an interesting tendency towards recurring themes and plot devices throughout his life as a director.
Rope is a 1948 American psychological crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1929 play of the same title by Patrick Hamilton. The film was adapted by Hume Cronyn with a screenplay by Arthur Laurents.
Hitchcock/Truffaut is a 1966 book by François Truffaut about Alfred Hitchcock, originally released in French as Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock.
