Wrong Men & Notorious Women: Five Hitchcock Thrillers 1935-1946
July 2003 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

During the years from 1934 to 1938, Alfred Hitchcock became the top English director of thrillers. His string of hits, including The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, all played on human fears of an innocent person being caught in the middle of life-threatening forces.

In The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is a Canadian tourist who becomes innocently entrapped in a nightmarish murder, and escapes to run from both the good guys and bad guys, all the while trying to prove his innocence and stop a nefarious crew of spies. Hitchcock carries us at breakneck speed around the British Isles as Hannay tries to figure out why he’s in all this trouble. Considered by many to be Hitchcock’s first great film, The 39 Steps has all the touches we would come to know in his more mature work -- the innocent man on the run, the icy blonde (Madeline Carroll, in this case), and the Hitchcock cameo (7:10 into the film; he’s the guy throwing trash on the ground). Hitchcock had become the young master of suspense over surprise. (For more information on Hitchcock’s view of the contrasts between suspense and surprise, read the introduction to Rear Window).

Three years later, The Lady Vanishes was to be Hitchcock’s last low-budget British film. It is another example of an innocent person pulled against their will into intrigue. Two women strike-up a conversation on a train. Iris (Margaret Lockwood) and the kindly old Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) are enjoying each other’s company. After Iris awakens from a nap, Miss Froy has disappeared, and no one else on the train even admits to having seen her. Delightfully funny and, at the same time, tense and frightening, The Lady Vanishes is the least of the five films, but still better than almost any other film you will see this year.

After his string of British hits, David O. Selznick lured Hitchcock to the US. Finally he had a big budget and big stars. His first project was an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Gothic melodrama Rebecca. George Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and the second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) are newlyweds doomed by the fate of Rebecca, the deceased first Mrs. de Winter. With all Rebecca’s many secrets, twists, and surprises, I can’t tell you much about the story without giving it away. However, I can tell you the public loved it. The movie was a huge success, nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and winning the Best Picture award.

Hitchcock loved beautiful women, and the most attractive of the day stood in line to work with him. By 1945, 30-year-old Ingrid Bergman was not only gorgeous, but also a great actress with an Oscar on her mantelpiece. For Spellbound, Hitchcock chose Gregory Peck as a sympathetic-but-troubled man, and Bergman as a cold-as-ice psychiatrist. The centerpiece of this Freudian murder-mystery masterwork is a psychedelic dream-sequence depiction of insanity staged by Salvador Dali. Again, during the three acts, Hitchcock takes us through mental and emotional twists and turns, leaving us wrung-out at the end.

The final movie in the collection is Notorious. This is one of Hitchcock’s visual masterpieces. If you have any interest whatever in the director’s art, Notorious offers a master class in how to do it right. For a perfect example, watch chapter 5 and notice the interplay of lighting, camera moves, focus techniques, art design, and Bergman’s deliciously sexy (if rumpled) acting. Hitchcock again delivers characters caught-up in affairs beyond their control. In this case, we have a Chinese box of a plot. Bergman loves Grant, who is a good guy (meaning on the side of the US) but a bad man. Rains, who is a bad guy, but a good man, loves Bergman. The story focuses around spies, Nazis, and how the three will end up. Again, I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it is one you can love both intellectually and emotionally.

Kudos to the Criterion Collection for this outstanding set of prime Hitchcock movies. During the 11 years covered, Hitchcock made 15 superb films and a couple of WWII propaganda shorts. This collection cherry-picks the best and delivers the Criterion standards of excellence we have come to expect. The producers have delivered near-perfect pictures and clean sound with only a touch of noise.

The copious extras are intellectually stimulating and never feel like filler. Each DVD contains a richly designed insert with full cast and crew information, and an extremely well-written and penetrating essay. Though each movie is available separately, the set would cost $200. Buy the box and it’s $125. I can’t imagine any serious film lover who wouldn’t want all five.

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