Hitchcock Film Festival

Studying at McGill

In autumn 1981 I started my MSc in the Institute of Oceanography at McGill University. I flew from Athens to Montreal a few days before the release of the first IBM computer running MS Dos, on the 3^rd of August. This day was marked by the famous air-traffic controller’s strike during Reagan’s presidency that ended with 11,500 strikers eventually being fired.

We were in the middle of the Atlantic when the pilot informed us that because of the strike we had to return back to Amsterdam. We spent the night at an airport hotel.

The semester started in early September. Sometime in October 1981, the McGill students’ association organized a film festival dedicated to one of the greatest directors of all time, the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

It is because of this festival that I became a cinephile and a big fan of Cary Grant, James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Doris Day, Ingrid Bergman, Tippi Hedren, and Kim Novak.

Hitchcock

Hitchcock had a good sense of humor. For example, he is known for giving a dinner party where all the food was blue: blue chicken, blue trout, blue ice cream, etc. He also called actors ‘cattle’. This aspect of his character is ascertained from the quick appearances in many of his movies as well as from his interviews.

He is also very instructive when he explains why suspense, which being an emotional process differs from mystery, is more intense if the audience knows more information than the protagonists of the film.

For instance, as he explains, consider a scene where four people sit around a table discussing and suddenly a bomb goes off. The scene shocks the audience for about 10 seconds. Now take the same scene and tell the audience that there is a bomb under the table that will go off in five minutes. The whole emotion of the audience is now different.

Alfred Hitchcock liked Larry Cohen’s idea  of directing a movie in a phone booth. Eventually this did not happen. It was realized later by Joel Schumacher in his 2002 movie Phone Booth.

The festival

According to the IMDB, Hitchcock directed 55 films (excluding one unfinished work, shorts and TV series). His first film was ‘The Pleasure Garden’, released in 1925, and his last one ‘Family Conspiracy’, released in 1976. Hitchcock was nominated six times for the Oscar of best director. Yet, he never won one.

During the McGill festival I watched a great deal of his 55 movies. Among them were his six masterpieces, which enjoy IMDB scores higher than 8 (i.e., 10.9% of his movies):

• Rebecca (8.1 from 144,000 viewers)
• Dial M for Murder (8.2 from 185,000 viewers)
• North by Northwest (8.3 from 341,000 viewers)
• Vertigo (8.3 from 420,000 viewers)
• Rear Window (8.5 from 513,000 viewers), and
• ‘Psycho’, his black and white masterpiece with Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh (8.5 from 706,000 viewers).

Some of the remaining movies shown in this marathon festival, if I remember correctly, were:

• The Jamaican Inn
• The Birds
• Silent Witness
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions)
• Notorious
• The 39 Steps
• To Catch a Thief
• Strangers on a Train
• Secret Agent
• Topaz
• Sabotage
• Torn Curtain
• Shadow of a doubt.

When I returned to Greece, I saw several of his movies for a second, third, even fourth time, in  various open air cinemas in Athens, including two of the most iconic ones: Riviera, in Exarchia, and Thision, right at the foot of the Acropolis.

Hitchcock’s films have complex and fast-paced plots, very good dialogs, exemplary direction and cinematography, and a top notch cast. They keep you on the edge of your seat during the whole movie. They are all time classics. Thus, I strongly recommend them for a home cinema experience.