Name a movie director who made more classics than Alfred Hitchcock. Go ahead; I'll wait.
There are legions of reports that he wasn't the world's nicest person. But there's no disputing the track record of the Englishman who gave us not just "Vertigo," which the prestigious Sight & Sound poll says is the finest movie ever made, but so many other greats that in the list below I have to leave off movies I love — "North by Northwest," "Strangers on a Train," "The Birds," "The Lady Vanishes," "Frenzy" — because I want to marry seven other films even more.
The key thing to remember about Hitchcock movies is the difference between surprise and suspense, the latter of which he famously mastered. To illustrate, he always used the example of two people sitting at a table, not knowing there's a bomb under it.
If the bomb explodes, surprising us, Hitchcock said it would supply 15 seconds of moviegoing pleasure. But, if we are shown the bomb and kept cognizant of it while the two unaware people eat brunch and chat about how great it is to be back in a restaurant, Hitchcock would say he could draw the scene out for 15 escalating minutes of excitement and suspense. Will it go off? Will they discover it? Can our brunchers be saved?
Essentially, it's the difference between violence that comes out of nowhere in a slasher film and the slower, more satisfying experience of a thriller that engages our emotions and builds on them. Hitchcock said that was his main duty as a director. One shortcut he used was casting huge stars, knowing their immediate appeal would help us side with their characters.
Another biggie for Hitchcock was taking advantage of whom we root for. He's not the first to force us to identify with a bad guy, as we do in "Psycho," fearing for Norman Bates as the authorities close in on him, despite the fact that he just killed the movie's heroine. But Hitchcock trademarked this technique, which has inspired point-of-view shots from that of Michael Myers in the "Halloween" movies to the mobsters of Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman."
All of these elements make us participants in the action. We respond to these scenes because Hitchcock compels us to contemplate the awful things that could happen and who might do them, although we wish they wouldn't. By watching, we are complicit.
Since Hitchcock's death in 1980, other films have taken these elements further, including this year's best picture Oscar winner, "Parasite" (an honor won by only one Hitchcock film, "Rebecca"). But there's no beating these seven streamable titles from the master of suspense.
