Library

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Alfred HitchcockWith his third feature film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Alfred Hitchcock took a major step toward greatness and made what he would come to consider his true directorial debut. This haunting silent thriller tells the tale of a mysterious young man (matinee idol Ivor Novello) who takes up residence at a London boardinghouse, just as a killer who preys on blonde women, known as the Avenger, descends upon the city. The film is animated by the palpable energy of a young stylist at play, decisively establishing the director s formal and thematic obsessions. In this edition, The Lodger is accompanied by Downhill, another 1927 silent exploration of Hitchcock s wrong man trope, also headlined by Novello making for a double feature that reveals the great master of the macabre as he was just coming into his own.

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-2K digital restoration, with a new score by composer Neil Brand, performed by the Orchestra of Saint Paul s
-Downhill, director Alfred Hitchcock s 1927 feature film starring Ivor Novello, in a 2K digital restoration with a new piano score by Brand
-New interview with film scholar William Rothman on Hitchcock s visual signatures
-New video essay by art historian Steven Jacobs about Hitchcock s use of architecture
-Excerpts from audio interviews with Hitchcock by filmmakers François Truffaut (1962) and Peter Bogdanovich (1963)
-Radio adaptation of The Lodger from 1940, directed by Hitchcock
-New interview with Brand on composing for silent film
-PLUS: Essays on The Lodger and Downhill by critic Philip Kemp

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Alfred HitchcockAn ordinary British couple vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassination. This fleet and gripping early thriller from the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was the first film the director made after signing to the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Besides affirming Hitchcock’s brilliance, it gave the brilliant Peter Lorre (M) his first English-speaking role, as a slithery villain. With its tension and gallows humor, it’s pure Hitchcock, and it set the tone for films like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

The 39 Steps

Alfred HitchcockThe 39 Steps is a heart-racing spy story by Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), following Richard Hannay (Oscar winner Robert Donat of Goodbye, Mr. Chips), who stumbles into a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors—a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued—as well as into an expected romance with the cool Pamela (Madeline Carroll). Adapted from a novel by John Buchan, this classic wrong-man thriller from the Master of Suspense anticipates the director’s most famous works (especially North by Northwest), and remains one of his cleverest and most entertaining films.

The Lady Vanishes

Alfred Hitchcock

Foreign Correspondent

Alfred HitchcockA New York crime reporter exposes a Nazi spy ring fronted by a peace organization. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rebecca

Alfred HitchcockRomance becomes psychodrama in Alfred Hitchcock s elegantly crafted Rebecca, his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, the film stars the enchanting Joan Fontaine as a young woman who believes she has found her heart's desire when she marries the dashing aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (played with cunning vulnerability by Laurence Olivier). But upon moving to Manderley her groom s baroque ancestral mansion she soon learns that his deceased wife haunts not only the home but the temperamental, brooding Maxim as well. The start of Hitchcock's legendary collaboration with producer David O. Selznick, this elegiac gothic vision, captured in stunning black and white by George Barnes, took home the Academy Awards for best picture and best cinematography.

TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary from 1990 featuring film scholar Leonard J. Leff
- Isolated music and effects track
- New conversation between film critic and author Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White
- New interview with special effects historian Craig Barron on the visual effects in Rebecca
- Documentary from 2007 on the making of Rebecca
- Screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests including actors Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter,
Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan, and Loretta Young
- Casting gallery annotated by director Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick
- Television interviews with Hitchcock and Fontaine from 1973 and 1980
- Audio interviews from 1986 with actor Judith Anderson and Fontaine
- Three radio adaptations of Rebecca, from 1938, 1941, and 1950, including Orson Welles s version for the Mercury Theatre
- Theatrical rerelease trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic and Selznick biographer David Thomson and selected production correspondence, including letters between Hitchcock and Selznick

Saboteur

Alfred Hitchcock

A young man accused of sabotage goes on the lam to prove his innocence.

Shadow of a Doubt

Alfred Hitchcock

A young girl fears her favorite uncle may be a killer.

Spellbound

Alfred Hitchcock

Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock

Rope

Alfred Hitchcock

Two wealthy young men try to commit the perfect crime by murdering a friend.

Strangers on a Train

Alfred Hitchcock

Rear Window

Alfred Hitchcock

A magazine photographer, housebound on account of a broken leg, becomes voyeur to the apartment building facing his rear window for lack of anything to do. Soon, he draws his visiting girlfriend in on the thrill and eventually they witness a murder in progress that gets them into hot water.

The Trouble with Harry

Alfred Hitchcock

There is a dead well dressed man in a meadow clearing in the hills above a small Vermont town. Captain Albert Wiles, who stumbles across the body and finds by the man's identification that his name is Harry Worp, believes he accidentally shot Harry dead while he was shooting for rabbits. Captain Wiles wants to hide the body as he feels it is an easier way to deal with the situation than tell the authorities. While Captain Wiles is in the adjacent forest, he sees other people stumble across Harry, most who don't seem to know him or care or notice that he's dead. One person who does see Captain Wiles there is spinster Ivy Gravely, who vows to keep the Captain's secret about Harry.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Alfred Hitchcock

International spies kidnap a doctor's son when he stumbles on their assassination plot. Filmed in VistaVision.

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's much-younger wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock

Advertising executive finds himself mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies.

Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock

The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Marnie

Alfred Hitchcock

The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock creates a spellbinding portrait of a distrurbed woman, and the man who tries to save her, in this unrelenting psychological thriller.

Torn Curtain

Alfred Hitchcock

Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in this classic tale of international espionage set behind the Iron Curtain.

Topaz

Alfred Hitchcock

The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, brought a best-selling spy novel to the screen with riveting results in this spellbinding espionage thriller. John Forsythe star as an American CIA agent who hires a French operative named Devereaux (Frederick Stafford) to go to Cuba and check out rumours of Russian missiles and a NATO spy called Topaz.

Frenzy

Alfred Hitchcock

In modern-day London, a sex criminal known as the Necktie Murderer has the police on alert, and in typical Hitchcock fashion, the trail is leading to an innocent man, who must now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer.

Family Plot

Alfred Hitchcock

When a wealthy woman unwittingly hires a con man and a phoney psychic to find her missing heir, the results are diabolically funny in Alfred Hitchcock's tongue-in-cheek mystery thriller.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Kent JonesIn 1962 Hitchcock and Truffaut locked themselves away in Hollywood for a week to excavate the secrets behind the mise-en-scène in cinema. Based on the original recordings of this meeting—used to produce the mythical book, Hitchcock/Truffaut—this film illustrates the greatest cinema lesson of all time and plummets us into the world of the creator of Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo. Hitchcock's incredibly modern art is elucidated and explained by today’s leading filmmakers: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.