![]() It’s also a brilliant textbook example of pacing and rising stakes. When the film finishes, the audience truly feels like they’ve been on an epic adventure across the country. ![]() It starts out in a hotel bar in New York City, and takes us to all sorts of locations including Long Island and Chicago, giving us a wide variety of snapshots of Americana imagery, landing us at that iconic South Dakota landmark. The film’s scope isn’t just big in its set-pieces, it’s in the sprawling nature of the adventure. There’s also the near-equally iconic climax at Mount Rushmore, which is both grand in heart-pounding suspense and in visual scale. There’s of course the iconic sequence where Thornhill is left to fend for himself amid some cornfields and is suddenly chased down by a terrifying crop-duster, the sequence which probably comes closest to rivaling the Psycho shower scene as the most spoofed and referenced of his career. The set-pieces have to be the largest scale of his career. North by Northwest is also arguably Hitchcock’s biggest film. And don't let the tropes fool you - some major beats may be predictable, but Hitch is a master at surprising audiences and there is no shortage of surprises here. Of course there’s a flirty rapport that develops between the two, and of course Eve’s gonna catch feelings for the guy she’s setting up, but it’s hard to deny it’s all damn fun to watch regardless of perceived predictability. Their meeting is seemingly happenstance as she helps hide him from the police, but really, Eve secretly works for Vandamm. While trying to evade police on a train, he meets the charming but mysterious (and yes, blonde) Eve Kendall, played with pure coolness by Eva Marie Saint. After surviving the attempted murder, Thornhill ends up getting framed for an actual murder, and decides the only way to clear his name is to go on the run, get to the bottom of this and track down the real George Kaplan. As a result, Thornhill is a kidnapped, interrogated and almost killed by James Mason’s evil spy character, Phillip Vandamm (what a name!) and his henchman, Leonard (the always interesting Martin Landau). Alfred Hitchcock.Grant stars as Roger Thornhill, the smooth but hapless ad exec who gets mistaken for a secret agent named George Kaplan by a couple of thugs in a swanky New York hotel bar just because he happened to flag down a waiter at precisely the wrong moment. Made even more outstanding by Claude Raines in the lead role, The Diamond Necklace is another apt display of Hitchcock playing with the audience through what is shown and not shown with a wonderful twist that you won’t see coming.Ĭlassic and revolutionary television, Alfred Hitchcock Presents Seasons 1 - 4 is a treasure trove of cracking stories in the indelible style of Mr. Faithful service goes unrewarded when her father is given a week to finish up, but he'll show how much he'll be missed by selling the firm's most expensive gem by his last day of 37 years service. The Diamond Necklace is the tale of a jewelry firm who has cast out the last of a family who've been employees for 117 years, and the company won't hire the last of the line because she's a woman. ![]() It’s Hitchcock at his subtle best, perhaps restricted by tighter censorship since he was on TV, but it’s an exquisite display of ratcheting up tension without any gore to speak off. Pelham who, after a series of troubling incidents, is led to believe that he has a double who is deliberately impersonating him. Pelham was directed by Hitchcock himself (even though he was the creator he only directed less than twenty episodes spanning seven seasons) follows Mr. ![]() Two stand out episodes from series one to four are The Case of Mr. From its opening sequence of a simple line caricature of Hitchcock accompanied by Gounod’s Funeral March of Marionette to Hitchcocks droll, monotone perfectly crafted monologue openings this is classic stuff. Not only is Alfred Hitchcock Presents brilliant television story wise, visually and thematically but it's utterly iconic. At that time TV was seen as a ‘lesser’ medium and for a director of Hitchcock’s calibre not only creating but hosting a TV series was unheard of. By this stage Hitchcock had released Rope, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, making him a household name. Join the legendary ‘Master of Suspense,’ Alfred Hitchcock, in every original episode from Seasons 1–4 of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the Emmy Award-winning murder-mystery series that, in the words of Hitchcock himself, “brought murder back into the home – where it belongs.” Loaded with twists, turns and things that go bump in the night, these classic tales of menace and mayhem are brought together in this 20-disc set.Īlfred Hitchcock Presents was ahead of its time when it first broadcast in 1955.
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