Alfred Hitchcock Collection [6 Discs]

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: All
• Number of Discs: 6
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo

AWARDS

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1935

• New York Film Critics Circle

•     Won Best Director - 1938 (Alfred Hitchcock)

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2004

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Anny Ondra - Alice White
       Anne Grey - The Girl
       Charles Paton - Mr. White
       C.V. France - Mr. Hillcrest
       Barry Jones - Henry Doyle
       Basil Radford - Pengallan's Guest
       Antonia Brough - Susan
       Basil Radford - Erica's Uncle
       Basil Radford - Charter
       D.A. Clarke - Smith - Insp. Binstead
       George Bancroft - 2nd Stranger
       Peggy Simpson - Young Maid
       Catherine Lacey - The Nun
       Jeanne de Casalis - Pengallan's Guest
       Googie Withers - Blanche
       Sally Stewart - Julie
       Alan Lewis

• Director:

  Alfred Hitchcock

• Producer:

  John Maxwell, Edward Black, Charles Laughton, Erich Pommer, Michael Balcon, Ivor Montagu

• Screenwriter:

  Alfred Hitchcock, Benn Wolfe Levy, Michael Powell, Charles Bennett, Rodney Ackland, Alma Reville

• Play Author:

  Jefferson J. Farjeon

• Screen Story:

  Clemence Dane

• Play Author:

  Clemence Dane

• Screenwriter:

  Walter Mycroft

• Play Author:

  Helen Simpson

• Screenwriter:

  Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder

• Book Author:

  Ethel Lina White

• Screenwriter:

  J.B. Priestley, Joan Harrison

• Book Author:

  Daphne du Maurier

• Screenwriter:

  Ian Hay

• Book Author:

  John Buchan

• Screenwriter:

  Leslie Arliss, Norman Lee, Eliot Stannard, J.E. Hunter

• Play Author:

  Eden Phillpots, John Galsworthy

• Book Author:

  W. Somerset Maugham

• Screenwriter:

  Jesse Lasky, Jr.

• Play Author:

  Campbell Dixon

• Screenwriter:

  E.V.H. Emmett, Helen Simpson, Campbell Dixon

• Book Author:

  Joseph Conrad

• Screenwriter:

  Edwin Greenwood, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, A.R. Rawlinson, Emlyn Williams, Gerald Savory

• Book Author:

  Josephine Tey

• Cinematographer:

  Jack Cox, Bryan Langley, Bernard Knowles, Harry Stradling, Claude MacDonnell, John J. Cox, Curt Courant

• Composer (Music Score):

  John Hubert Bath, John Reynders, Henry Stafford, Louis Levy

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Louis Levy

• Composer (Music Score):

  Eric Fenby

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Frederick Lewis

• Composer (Music Score):

  Arthur Benjamin

• Editor:

  Emile de Ruelle, A.C. Hammond, Rene Harrison, Alfred Roome, R.E. Dearing, Robert Hamer, Derek N. Twist, Alfred Booth, Ivor Montagu, A.R. Gobbett, Charles Frend, Hugh Stewart

• Production Designer:

  Albert Jullion, Otto Werndorff

• Art Director:

  C. Wilfred Arnold, John Mead, Alexander Vetchinsky, Tom N. Moraham, Alfred Junge, Peter Proud

• Associate Producer:

  Ivor Montagu

• Set Designer:

  Norman J. Arnold, Wilfred C. Arnold, Maurice Carter, Alexander Vetchinsky, Albert Jullion, Tom N. Moraham, Thomas H. Morahan, Otto Werndorff, Alfred Junge, Peter Proud

• Costume Designer:

  Molly McArthur, Joe Strassner, Marianne

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Dallas Bower

• Makeup:

  Ern Westmore

• Special Effects:

  Harry Watts, Jack Whitehead

• First Assistant Director:

  Frank Mills

• Production Manager:

  Hugh Perceval

• Assistant Director:

  Roy Ward Baker

• Scenic Artist:

  Albert J. Whitlock

• Continuity:

  Alma Reville

• Recording:

  Sydney Wiles

REVIEWS:

• Alfred Hitchcock relished in playing off of his audience's suspicions, and this early suspense film accomplishes just that. Made when Europe was on the verge of war, Sabotage focuses on Mr. Verloc, the incarnation of the heavily accented neighbor who may not be as benign as he seems. This xenophobic approach works to the film's advantage, as the sight of Verloc and his shadowy associates plotting the destruction of London surely must have grabbed English audiences in 1936. Hitchcock's fascination with espionage and crime is evident, as always, especially in the scene where Verloc meets his contact in the aquarium. Another favorite Hitchcock element present is having a wife slowly come to distrust and fear her husband. Sylvia Sidney plays this transformation beautifully. In the early scenes she is warm and friendly, but as the film progresses, she begins to tighten up, and in the final scenes, her hatred toward Verloc is utterly convincing. As for Oscar Homolka, from the start it's obvious he's up to something, but he is convincing as a small cog in a much larger wheel, a pathetic man who is overwhelmed by the pressures imposed upon him. But the centerpiece of the film is the nerve-racking journey of Mrs. Verloc's younger brother Steve, as he travels through London unaware that the reel can he carries contains a bomb. The bomb, of course, is set to a timer, and each delay adds increasing tension as the hour of detonation approaches. The sequence is pure Hitchcock, as there is nothing more suspenseful than to see an innocent in danger. Sabotage may be a couple of notches below The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, but it is still classic Hitchcock. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, Rovi
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps firmly established the director's reputation beyond the boundaries of the British isles, but it did far more than that: it was also the film where Hitchcock's reach and grasp as a filmmaker began growing by leaps and bounds. He'd already made three excellent thrillers (The Lodger (1926), Blackmail (1929), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)) that had attracted considerable attention in America, but The 39 Steps, as a piece of screencraft, assembled all the best elements in those widely scattered successes (spread across eight years of his career) between two covers in a way that riveted audiences and industry observers. It played exactly the way that British movies weren't supposed to, lively and piercingly funny, rather than stodgy and dignified; it was almost as much a comedy as a thriller, which was something new in any country's cinema; and it was almost as much a battle of the sexes in the jousting of its two leads (Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll) as it was a quest by the hero to prove his innocence of a murder charge; by the end of the movie, we want to see not only how Richard Hanney (Donat) proves his innocence but also how he and Pamela (Carroll) manage to stay together. Not coincidentally, The 39 Steps was also the first of his major films in which Hitchcock ripped up and threw away most of the contents of the underlying source (a novel by John Buchan that had been a best-seller then and which has remained a perennially popular read ever since) -- he later followed this practice in his subsequent treatments of Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles (as Young and Innocent), Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (as The Lady Vanishes), and Francis Beeding's The House of Dr. Edwardes (as Spellbound), among other literary properties. In the process, he struck a blow for the director as a creative voice in his own right, independent of and superior to the novelist (at least where actual screen adaptations were concerned), who might take one or two good ideas, a name or two, and perhaps a setting and a scene from a chapter and junk everything else, making it his own. In a time when producers and studios still occupied a place of cultural inferiority (even in their own minds) to the authors and publishers of the printed word, this was no small achievement, especially considering that it was done well and, thus, justified itself. So, in his own way, working within the thriller genre in The 39 Steps, Hitchcock helped open the way for virtually every major director who came after him. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
• Blackmail is Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie, and not a bad effort at all. The whole film was almost completed, when sound came in and revolutionized the industry; Hitchcock was forced to re-shoot some sequences and add others to make the film a mostly-talking film, something like Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927). Hitchcock's leading lady, Anny Ondra, had a very thick continental accent, not a problem for a silent film, but a real liability for a talkie. Hitchcock overcame the problem by having another actress speak the lines on-stage, offscreen, while Ondra simply mouthed them for the camera. Since dubbing was unknown at the time, this was the only method; then, too, the camera was confined to a soundproof shooting booth, and so the mobility of Hitchcock's camera is severely limited. During one long sequence, Cyril Ritchard as Crewe, the artist, sits down and plays a piano solo seemingly to keep the audience interested, but the film ends with a thrilling chase through the British Museum (mostly accomplished using miniatures, and the Schufftan Process, which allowed full-scale backgrounds to be reelected into the lens of the camera through a series of mirrors). It's interesting to see how Hitchcock deals with sound, when it was clearly thrust upon him at the last minute, and while not a front-rank Hitchcock, it is still a remarkable historical document of an artist finding his way through a medium that has suddenly been transformed by advancing technology. ~ Wheeler Winston Dixon, Rovi
• Deception is the order of the day in this solid espionage thriller from director Alfred Hitchcock. Based on Somerset Maugham's adventure stories and a play by Campbell Nixon, Secret Agent is deceptive in every way: characters hide their true intentions, beautiful locations mask the sinister deeds that happen in them, even the film's title is tricky since the story is about several agents rather than just one. All of this duplicity helps develop the suspense normally associated with Hitchcock's films, but Secret Agent falls a bit short of becoming one of the director's classics. The picture's primary shortcomings lie with the plot: John Gielgud is a spy whose assignment is to find and kill an enemy spy in Switzerland. The fact that the hero of the film is told to kill rather than save someone or steal something is a dark, edgy move, but it weakens the viewer's connection to Gielgud's character. In one of the most chilling sequences, Gielgud and Peter Lorre carry out the assassination only to discover that they've killed an innocent man. To a lesser degree, the cast is also a weakness. While the performances are decent, Gielgud, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young seem out of place in a Hitchcock film. Lorre is the bright, shining star, in the role of a Mexican general whose twisted black humor matches his murderous tactics. Lorre's character is neither a Mexican nor a general, but he steals the show. The most exciting sequence is the climax, in which the real spy is revealed amidst gunplay and a terrific train crash. Hitchcock had two slightly different endings prepared for the film, but neither was used. The director appears as a mourner during the fake funeral that opens the film. ~ Patrick Legare, Rovi
• It's easy to forget, with all his successes, that Alfred Hitchcock's career suffered quite a few periods of commercial decline. Following his two international breakthroughs, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935), the director produced three films with relatively disappointing box-office returns. In 1938, he broke out of this slump with the popular and entertaining The Lady Vanishes. The director's penultimate movie before leaving England, it's a very light picture, more dependent on comedy than almost any of his previous films. A good deal of the humor comes from the interplay between the definitively British tourists Charters and Caldicott, played indelibly by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, that the actors would reprise in several other films. Despite (or perhaps because of) its "Englishness," The Lady Vanishes made quite a splash in America, securing Hitchcock a place in Hollywood. The charming script by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat was based on the popular Ethel Lina White novel, The Wheel Spins. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi
• Jamaica Inn is definitely lesser Alfred Hitchcock, but it's not the terrible film it's often assumed to be. True, it suffers considerably from the fact that star Charles Laughton was also the producer, interfering mightily with Hitchcock and not allowing the director the free hand he needed to salvage what was admittedly a rather dull script. In spite of this, however, there are a number of Hitchcockian touches, including an amoral, misanthropic man who teeters on (and goes over) the brink of madness (think Strangers on a Train and Psycho). And the director does very well with his large-scale action sequences, as well as guiding new leading lady Maureen O'Hara in an impressive star performance. (For the record, O'Hara also looks simply stunning.) Laughton is a much bigger problem, giving a performance that is ludicrous and over the top; it's true that he holds your attention (even when the character shouldn't be doing so), but Laughton becomes tiresome very quickly. Robert Newton, as the hero/love interest, is also a bit stiff. Still, even with Hitchcock operating at less than his best, he does manage to make Jamaica reasonably entertaining -- especially when Laughton gets out of the way. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi
• There is little mystery as to the identity of the killer is in this early thriller from Alfred Hitchcock, but the master still delivers enough to make the film a worthwhile viewing. Based on the play Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson and adapted for the screen by Hitchcock and Walter Mycroft, Murder! is really just a standard-issue mystery at its core. However, the director's touches and good performances add enough to the film to make it stand slightly above average. The film is broken into four sections: the murder, the trial, the investigation, and the cat-and-mouse game used to flush out the real killer. The first three parts are routine and slow, but the finale is suspenseful in trademark Hitchcock fashion. It is topped off by a shocking conclusion that the director pulls off in grand style. Herbert Marshall toplines the picture as a tormented gentleman whose guilt over helping put a young lady in the gallows prompts him to find the real culprit in the murder case for which she was convicted. Marshall hasn't got the charisma of a Cary Grant or a James Stewart, but he does a solid job playing a man whose anguish hides his feelings for the girl. Esme Percy plays the dour villain with a sullen style that seems best explained by his behavior in the conclusion. Norah Baring is very good as the death-row babe although Hitchcock may have erred by keeping the character out of the picture until more than halfway through. Some of the recognizable Hitchcock elements that turn up in Murder! include his usual amusing array of primitive psychobabble and a great shot in the opening murder sequence in which the camera pans over and slowly reveals the reactions of the witnesses, the stunned prime suspect, and finally the murder weapon and the victim. A German version titled Mary was filmed simultaneously on the same sets. Hitchcock can be seen nearly halfway through the film walking in front of the victim's complex. ~ Patrick Legare, Rovi
• This early Alfred Hitchcock thriller is certainly not among the master's best -- and the poor quality of most surviving prints does not help matters -- but Number 17 is an entertaining little journey into mystery. Students of the director and his style will be the most appreciative of the effort, more willing to overlook the awkwardness of much of the film in order to ascertain glimpses of things to come in later films. And there's a lot that's awkward, from the not-really-surprising ending to several confusingly shot sequences (and some excessively choppy editing throughout). The climactic train sequence is emblematic of the film as a whole; portions of it are exciting and effective, but much of it is undercut by poor pacing and timing that just doesn't quite work. Ultimately, it does build up to a good head of steam, but it has to strain mightily to get there. The cast is good, overcoming the underdeveloped nature of many of their roles; Leon M. Lion does especially well in the comic relief lead and Anne Grey is quite effective as the mysterious "mute" member of the gang. John Stuart projects that time-honored British mixture of manliness and restraint, and Donald Calthrop is nice and oily as one of the thieves. 17 is rough going at times, but it's worth sticking out its short running time. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi
• 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, Rovi
• Young and Innocent plays like a warm-up for Hitchcock's later masterpieces. With some echoes of his earlier classic The 39 Steps, it follows the journey of a man wrongly accused of murder on the run with a woman who thinks he is guilty. The themes Hitchcock addresses here would return again and again in his future films, and would often be pulled off with more sophistication and style, but Young and Innocent remains entertaining and thrilling in its own right. Nova Pilbeam and Derrick de Marney lack the charm and chemistry of later Hitchcock stars, but they still give it an enthusiastic effort. Edward Rigby is good as Old Will, a bum who helps the young leads, and Mary Clare and Basil Radford give very different performances from their roles a year later in The Lady Vanishes. There are some truly Hitchcockian moments, such as the entire opening sequence (from the confrontation between a man and a woman to the discovery of her body on the beach), and the birthday party for Erica's niece. Equally impressive is a later scene when Tisdall, Erica, and Old Will flee to an old mine, and their car falls into the collapsing ground. The wrong man on the run was one of Hitchcock's favorite plots, as it allowed him to delve into some of his familiar themes; Young and Innocent falls short of the complexity of those later films, but is still a strong effort. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, Rovi