Today is National Hitchcock Day, a day of celebrating and remembering the Master of Suspense, the man who was as much a colorful enigmatic character as the scores of films he directed, many of which stand as cinema’s all-time best, the one and only Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock helmed films such as Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Frenzy, Rope, and a multitude of others (15 of which are now collected on the Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection Blu-ray box set), creating a resume that not only stands the test of time, but remains a highly influential body of work, cinematic primers, and visual textbooks that scores of filmmakers in Hitchcock’s wake have studied, dissected, analyzed, and revered, using many of his techniques in their own productions. Hitchcock had a huge imagination and it showed in so many of his productions, be it his casting, framing, staging, the way his movies were shot, edited, and scored; imitations in the sincerest form of flattery and the in-sincerest form of thievery, the film landscape that Hitchcock planted by way of his expert movie landscaping remains terrain much treaded on by so many luminaries and rookies and all in between, who work not only in Hollywood, but film companies around the world.
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