Product Description
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The legendary Alfred Hitchcock is recognized for directing some
of the most unforgettable and groundbreaking films of all time.
Now, for the first time ever, five of the most iconic films from
The Master of Suspense are available together in Alfred
Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection including Rear Window,
, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds. Starring
Hollywood favorites James Stewart, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly,
Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, Kim
Novak and Rod Taylor, this essential collection captures the most
memorable moments in the career of a true cinematic master.
Bonus Content:
Disc 1 - Rear Window:
* Rear Window Ethics: An Original Documentary
* A Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael Hayes
* Production Photographs
* Production Notes
* Re-Release Trailer Narrated by James Stewart
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 2 - :
* Obsessed with : New Life for Hitchcock's Masterpiece
* Feature Commentary with Associate Producer ert Coleman,
Restoration Team Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz and Other
Participants
* Original Theatrical Trailer
* Restoration Theatrical Trailer
* Production Notes
* Foreign Censorship Ending
* The Archives
*
Disc 3 - North by Northwest:
* Commentary by Screenwriter Ernest Lehman
* Music-Only Audio Track
*
Disc 4 - Psycho (1960):
* Theatrical Trailer
* Re-Release Trailers
* Newsreel Footage: The Release of Psycho
* The Shower Scene
* The Psycho Archives
* Production Photographs
* Behind-the-Scenes Photographs
* The Shower Scene: Storyboards by Saul Bass
* Lobby Cards
* s and Psycho Ads
* Production Notes
*
Disc 5 - The Birds:
* Deleted Scene
* The Original Ending
* Storyboard Sequence
* Tippi Hedren's Screen Test
* The Birds Is Coming (Universal International Newsreel)
* Suspense Story: National Press Club Hears Hitchcock (Universal
International Newsreel)
* Production Photographs
* Production Notes
* Theatrical Trailer
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Psycho
For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and
particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing
has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a
first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also
an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock
skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main
characters--then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under
you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's
boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as
Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a
fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for
one eful night. --Jim Emerson
Rear Window
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular
portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined
and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are
dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment,
convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience
observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well
as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a
droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues
to what may be a murder.
Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a
voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an
accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama
(and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom,
underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace
Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet
when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears,
Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's
really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.
Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime
at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere
pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of
Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the
lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even
as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than
we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear
of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa
provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only
into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even
commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's
ing, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the
teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a
superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its
nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear
Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional
honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the
director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland
North By Northwest
A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and
enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen
Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck
and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more
profoundly disturbing (1958) and the stark horror of
Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at
his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also
features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is
not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock
critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes
an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The
Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from to
Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is
Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who
is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named
George Kan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as
the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill
him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie
Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most
convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of
course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the
United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield
(where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger
finale atop the stone faces of Rushmore. Plus a sparkling
Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann
score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire?--Jim Emerson
Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released
in 1958, has since taken its deserved place as Alfred
Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal
achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10
movies ever made in the once-a-decade & Sound international
critics poll, placing at number 4 in the 1992 survey. (Universal
Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease
of this 1958 Para production was a tremendous success with
the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired detective
who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim
Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being
possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the
disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in
love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be
criminal. around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and
the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and
elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan
Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, is as lovely as it is
haunting. --Jim Emerson
Birds
Vacationing in northern California, Alfred Hitchcock was struck
by a story in a Santa Cruz newspaper: "Seabird Invasion Hits
Coastal Homes." From this peculiar incident, and his memory of a
short story by Daphne du Maurier, the master of suspense created
one of his strangest and most terrifying films. The Birds follows
a chic blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as she travels to
the coastal town of Bodega Bay to hook up with a rugged fellow
(Rod Taylor) she's only just met. Before long the town is
attacked by marauding birds, and Hitchcock's skill at staging
action is brought to the fore. Beyond the superb effects,
however, The Birds is also one of Hitchcock's most
psychologically complicated scenarios, a tense study of violence,
loneliness, and complacency. What really gets under your skin are
not the bird skirmishes but the anxiety and the eerie quiet
between attacks. The director elevated an unknown model, Tippi
Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith), to being his latest cool,
blond leading lady, an experience that was not always easy on the
much-pecked Ms. Hedren. Still, she returned for the next
Hitchcock picture, the underrated Marnie. Treated with scant
attention by serious critics in 1963, The Birds has grown into a
classic and--despite the sci-fi trappings--one of Hitchcock's
most serious films. --Robert Horton