Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece CollectionAlfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection

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DVD FEATURES:
  • Region: 1
  • Number of Discs: 15
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen), 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard), 1.66:1 (Vistavision)
  • Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, DDM2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Screen: Color, Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV, Black and White, Pan and Scan
  • Subtitle: English, Spanish, French
  • Features:
    • The Birds - Rated PG-13
    • Marnie: Rated PG
    • Vertigo: Rated PG
    • Rope: Rated PG
    • Rear Window: Rated PG
    • Psycho: Rated R
    • The Man Who Knew Too Much: Rated PG
    • Torn Curtain: Rated PG
    • Frenzy: Rated R
    • Shadow of a Doubt: Rated PG
    • The Trouble With Harry: Rated PG
    • Topaz: Rated NR
    • Saboteur: Rated PG
    • Bonus Disc: Rated NR
    • Family Plot: Rated PG
    • 14 documentaries
    • 9 featurettes
    • Commentaries
    • Newsreel footage
    • Production photos, sketches and notes
    • Storyboards
    • Theatrical trailers
    • Masters of Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock
    • AFI Salute to Alfred Hitchcock
    • All about the Birds
    • The making of Psycho
AWARDS
  • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  •     Nominated Best Visual Effects - 1963 (Ub Iwerks)
  •     Nominated Best Black and White Art Direction - 1960 (Joseph Hurley, George Milo, Robert Clatworthy)
  •     Nominated Best Black and White Cinematography - 1960 (John L. Russell)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1960 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Supporting Actress - 1960 (Janet Leigh)
  •     Nominated Best Art Direction - 1958 (Hal Pereira, Henry Bumstead, Sam Comer, Frank R. McKelvey)
  •     Nominated Best Sound - 1958 (George Dutton)
  •     Nominated Best Color Cinematography - 1954 (Robert Burks)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1954 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Screenplay - 1954 (John Michael Hayes)
  •     Nominated Best Sound - 1954 (Loren L. Ryder)
  •     Nominated Best Original Story - 1943 (Gordon McDonell)
  • AFI Fest
  •     Film Presented - 2007
  • American Film Institute
  •     Won 100 Greatest American Movies - 1998
  • British Academy of Film and Television Arts
  •     Nominated Best British Film - 1954 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  • Directors Guild of America
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1960 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1958 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1956 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1954 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  • Edgar Allan Poe Awards
  •     Won Best Screenplay - 1976 (Ernest Lehman)
  •     Won Best Screenplay - 1960 (Joseph Stefano)
  •     Won Best Screenplay - 1954 (John Michael Hayes)
  • Hollywood Foreign Press Association
  •     Won New Star of the Year - Female - 1963 (Tippi Hedren)
  •     Won Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Pic - 1960 (Janet Leigh)
  •     Nominated Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Com - 1976 (Barbara Harris)
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1972 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Nominated Best Original Score - 1972 (Ron Goodwin)
  •     Nominated Best Picture - Drama - 1972
  •     Nominated Best Screenplay - 1972 (Anthony Shaffer)
  • Library of Congress
  •     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1997
  •     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1991
  •     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1990
  •     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1988
  • National Board of Review
  •     Won Best Director - 1969 (Alfred Hitchcock)
  •     Won Best Supporting Actor - 1969 (Philippe Noiret)
  •     Won Best Actress - 1954 (Grace Kelly)
  •     Won Best Acting - 1943 (Teresa Wright)
  •     Nominated Best Picture - 1976
  •     Nominated Best Picture - 1972
  •     Nominated Best Picture - 1969
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1935
  • New York Film Critics Circle
  •     Won Most Distinguished Reissue - 1996
  •     Won Best Actress - 1954 (Grace Kelly)
  • Telluride Film Festival
  •     Film Presented - 1982
  •     Film Presented - 1981
  •     Film Presented - 1980
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
REVIEWS:
  • Though Alfred Hitchcock would remake the movie himself in 1956 with a bigger budget, the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is arguably a more historically significant and aesthetically interesting film. It was Hitchcock's first true international hit. Though he wouldn't have a major success in America until The Lady Vanishes, Man and the subsequent The 39 Steps helped establish the director's distinctive style and lay the groundwork for his popularity. Along with Hitchcock's trademark blend of suspense and humor and blurring of the normal and abnormal, the film also features his characteristically grand showpieces, most memorably the recreation of the true-life "Sidney Street Siege" and the famous Albert Hall scene. The film was also significant as German actor Peter Lorre's first English-language part. Having fled Nazi Germany in 1933, Lorre had to learn his lines phonetically, but he steals the film as the cruel but melancholic bad guy, and his difficulties with English barely show. The actor would go on to give memorable turns in such notable Hollywood productions as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
  • One of Hitchcock's best films of the 1940s, Shadow of a Doubt is both a fascinating psychological case study and a scathing portrait of the American middle-class family. The film is often considered one of Hitchcock's darkest, and the director himself reportedly claimed it as his favorite. Cynicism underlies all the proceedings, from young Charlie's "miraculous" summoning of her Uncle Charlie (tantamount to calling up the Angel of Death) to Uncle Charlie's chilling exposition of his view on life, relayed to his niece: "You live in a dream. Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?" This is one of Hitchcock's most unsettling films, preoccupied like many other Hitchcock works with good vs. evil, and the capacity for evil that lurks within us all; and it is also one of his most stylized, gorgeously shot by Joseph Valentine. Featuring stellar performances from Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten (as well as Hume Cronyn's comical debut as a dim-witted, self-appointed murder "expert"), Shadow of a Doubt is a memorable experience as both a major Hitchcock film and an enduringly creepy commentary on human nature. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
  • Though it lacks the excitement of his best works, Rope remains a solid suspense effort that is recognized as one of Alfred Hitchcock's most technically challenging films. Since the entire story -- two young men commit murder for sport, hide the body in a chest, then celebrate the effort by having a party whose guests include the victim's father and girlfriend -- occurs in real time in one setting, Hitchcock shot Rope in a series of continuous ten-minute takes. Furniture and walls were mounted on rails so they could be silently moved to allow for the camera's access. The onscreen action required no less innovation, and the cast, including Farley Granger, John Dall, and James Stewart, handles the lengthy scenes brilliantly. Technical merits aside, the picture's real sparkplug is Stewart. The actor single-handedly electrifies the film with his stellar performance as a suspicious college professor. The film is loosely based on the case of famous thrill-killers Leopold and Loeb, who were homosexual lovers; though it is never explicitly stated due to 1940s censorship rules, Hitchcock makes it apparent that Granger and Dall are playing homosexuals. Rope marked two other Hitchcock firsts: it was the first picture he shot in color and it was the first one he produced. The director's cameo is the subject of much debate. Some claim he is seen during the opening credits crossing the street, but the more likely appearance is at the film's one-hour mark, where his famous countenance can be seen in a distant neon "Reduco" sign in the city background. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide
  • Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur is a stellar suspense film that the director considered an American version of The 39 Steps. However, the film it is most reminiscent of is Hitchcock's 1959 smash North by Northwest, which also featured an innocent man framed for a crime, who leads a cross-country chase that ends on a national monument. Filled with thrills, laughs, and romance, Saboteur is an exceptional picture whose only fault lies in its weak lead actors. Hitchcock initially lobbied for Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck and Harry Carey as the three stars, but Universal went with Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, and Norman Lloyd, who stands out in his role as the devious saboteur. Other characters include Otto Kruger as the crooked tycoon behind the terrorism, Vaughan Glaser as the kindly blind man, and Murray Alper as a helpful trucker; all add a wonderful dimension to the film. Much of its success can also be attributed to Dorothy Parker's superb script, which takes Cummings' character on a wild adventure into fantastic locations. Standout sequences include the disturbing opening act of sabotage, a daring escape scene in which Cummings leaps into a river à la Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, an incredible movie theater scene in which onscreen gunfire turns shockingly real, a lavish party scene in which Cummings and Lane are seemingly trapped, and the classic climax in which Cummings and Lloyd dangle precipitously from the Statue of Liberty. Technically, the film is strikingly lighted and shot and is backed by an excellent Frank Skinner score. The director's traditional cameo takes place at a newsstand. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide
  • The Birds features a classic Alfred Hitchcock setup: average people placed in circumstances turned upside down. And of course, there are the requisite dark insinuations and strange psychological underpinnings. Though we're never sure why the birds are rising up, their behavior seems to be a response to humankind's complacency and arrogance. It's a frightening yet sportive vision of Judgment Day. As in Psycho, Hitchcock's previous film, the normalcy of the setting is allowed to set in before the audience is thrown into the perverse drama. When the bird violence comes, Hitchcock pulls out all the stops to make it as realistic as one could imagine. There are 371 trick shots in the film. Some have dated, but for the most part the effects are still effective. The last shots are especially memorable. And the movie features a unique soundtrack from frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann: no music, only bird sounds organized as if they were music, for maximum creepy impact. The Birds stands as the end of an unprecedented period when Hitchcock could no wrong; he made only five more features, with decidedly mixed artistic and financial results. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
  • Alfred Hitchcock rarely allowed his dry and barbed sense of humor to rise to the surface as fully as in The Trouble With Harry, one of his only real comedies, and a film that he often cited as a personal favorite. Like a Charles Addams or Gahan Wilson cartoon come to life, The Trouble With Harry finds its characters amusingly unconcerned with the fact that Harry is dead, and his remains -- repeatedly dug up, dragged about, and reburied -- are shown a casual disrespect that is both funny and jarring. Hitchcock had a fondness for eccentric comic-relief characters, and here he gave them a film to themselves; Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Dunnock, and Mildred Natwick are all in fine form. While it requires a certain suspension of disbelief to accept John Forsythe as a bohemian artist, Shirley MacLaine was an inspired choice, in her first screen role, as his love interest, displaying a sharp, pixie-ish charm that was a welcome alternative to the high-gloss glamour gals of the period (and Hitchcock's usual ice-queen heroines). The Trouble With Harry is not one of Hitchcock's best films, but the Master was clearly enjoying himself, and anyone who appreciated the eccentricity of Thelma Ritter in Rear Window or Leo G. Carroll in North by Northwest will have a lot of fun with this movie. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
  • It did middling business and the critics were unimpressed in 1958, but Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has come to be considered his greatest film for its complex examination of romantic pathology. Seamlessly combining evocative imagery and thematic concerns, Hitchcock structured Vertigo through numerous visual and narrative circles and twists, beginning with Saul Bass's opening title sequence. Steadily drawing the viewer into the figurative whirlpool of Scottie's mind as he investigates Madeleine, Hitchcock then broke the rules of suspense (as he would again in Psycho) with a mid-movie revelation that transforms the film from an eerie mystery into a deeply disturbing story of necrophiliac obsession. Using such visual effects as a track-out/zoom-in to signal Scottie's vertigo, Judy's hazily green-lit reemergence as Madeleine, and a surreal nightmare sequence, Hitchcock reveals Scotty's tortured psyche, belying James Stewart's nice-guy surface. Further ducking convention, Hitchcock allowed a character to get away with murder, while leaving Scottie metaphorically hanging in uncertainty. Admired by the film school generation of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma but unavailable for years due to rights problems, Vertigo had its critical reputation further burnished by its 1983 reissue. Its 1996 restoration returned the washed-out colors to their original clarity and digitally enhanced Bernard Herrmann's haunting score. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
  • Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate feature Frenzy was not only the master's first British-based production in two decades, but also a return to creepy form after his rocky late '60s period. Mixing black comedy and Hitchcock's most gruesome violence since Psycho, Frenzy's story of a rapist-murderer and the wrong man accused of the crime covers classic Hitchcock territory of violent sexual deviance and the thin line between innocence and guilt. Though the atmosphere is periodically lightened by police inspector Alec McCowen's close encounters with his wife's "gourmet" cuisine, Hitchcock also takes advantage of the loosened strictures on film content to stage a horrific rape and strangulation 15 minutes into the film. This early revelation of the killer only increases the suspense, setting the stage for a macabre struggle in a potato truck between murderer and corpse, and the famous tracking shot that moves away from the killer's door (as he invites his next victim inside), down the apartment house stairs and across the street. Shot in London with a British cast, Frenzy's turn away from Hollywood glamour further emphasizes the horror that lurks beneath bland normality. An international success, Frenzy returned Hitchcock to Hollywood's good graces, but he would complete only one more film before his 1980 death. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
  • On the surface a comic thriller about a photographer and the crime he thinks took place across the courtyard, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) turns into an interrogation of voyeurism and movie-viewing. Keeping the camera in Jeff's apartment (except for a couple of shots near the climax), Hitchcock limits the audience's view to what Jeff can see and hear from his immobilized perch. He is free to take in the spectacle of the events in the apartments that he sees, but he is powerless to intervene. Why he looks, however, is the larger question; Hitchcock suggests not just that Jeff is channel-surfing among apartments for idle entertainment but also that the urge to peep is a more universal trait than we might care to acknowledge. What Jeff finds, moreover, becomes a fantasy projection of his own fears about his own relationship with Lisa. Jeff becomes a voyeur to escape, but his gaze is literally -- and violently -- turned back on him by the suspected wife-killer in his thriller narrative. Wryly entertaining as well as skillfully executed and thematically complex, the popular Rear Window earned Hitchcock an Oscar nomination for Best Director and inspired such later films as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Sisters (1973). It was remade in 1998 as a TV movie with Christopher Reeve in the James Stewart role. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
  • Marnie could never be confused with prime Alfred Hitchcock, but it's a much better film than its tarnished reputation would lead one to believe. Modern audiences will likely find its psychological undercurrents a bit basic -- and therefore find the ending somewhat pat, predictable, and artificial -- but it somehow works nonetheless. There are some technical aspects -- the artificial locales of some sequences, the "red" motif -- that may seem primitive (although it's arguable that Hitchcock wanted just this kind of distancing effect to unsettle the audience as the characters themselves are unsettled). But Marnie has a basically intriguing story, and Jay Presson Allen's screenplay skillfully sets out its plot and fills out its characters so that they live and breathe. Hitchcock, of course, knows how to take advantage of the screenplay's strengths, tossing in surprising angles and building suspense through simple, but skillful, juxtapositions and tight editing. Tippi Hedren displays unexpected depth in the title role, Sean Connery is appropriately tough and tender, as called for, and there's a real sexual tension between them. Of the supporting cast, Diane Baker is alluring and dangerous and Louise Latham effectively chilling as the mother. Bernard Herrmann's score, pulsing with danger and passion, is a definite plus. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
  • In a decade in which what was acceptable onscreen would change more radically than at any other time in history, Psycho was in some ways the first shot in the battle for freer filmmaking in the 1960s. Few movies of its time were more direct and unapologetic in their violence or served it up with such disorienting abruptness or tongue-in-cheek wit. With its casual depiction of sex outside marriage, fleeting nudity, bursts of shocking violence, killing off a major character less than halfway through the movie, and focus on the psychological subtext of the murderer's personality, as well as the geometric imagery of Saul Bass's credit sequence and the percussive strings of Bernard Herrmann's score, Psycho was the film with which Hitchcock left the 1950s behind and started the 1960s with relish. Time hasn't hurt the film, either; it still generates a palpable tension and the odd chemistry between Perkins and Leigh in their dinner scene is a wonder to behold. While the film is still frightening after all these years, repeated screenings reveal a cold-blooded humor; with Psycho, Hitchcock tore asunder the audience's expectations of what a suspense film should be, and he appears to have had a wonderful time doing it. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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