When putting together a list of the 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, it’s like plunging into a spectacular alternate universe of wit, verve, and style. The director of “Rear Window,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho” has a body of work so deep there are endless ways you can parse it: Maybe you could focus on his , his approach to time, or the way . But on a basic level, you also run into a challenge with Hitchcock you face with few other filmmakers, full-stop: The Master of Suspense is one of the rare directors to have a filmography with both the volume and the quality to credibly field a Top 25.
With what other filmmakers can you do that? John Ford, certainly (Ford had the most films in our recent list of the ). or Fassbinder perhaps? They have the volume — so many of the greatest filmmakers make their movies few and far between — but there would be a palpable dropoff in quality by the time you get to #25. Certainly, there would be for worthy of rediscovery.
For Hitchcock, hard choices have to be made about what even makes a Top 25 at all: Some might advocate for his final film “Family Plot,” or or his Dali riff “Spellbound” — French critics in the ’50s had a soft spot for “Under Capricorn.” Those movies don’t make this list, even though they’re still worth watching. Our picks for the 25 Best Hitchcock Movies nonetheless contain a few surprises, and reveal a body of work that the world will keep coming back to as long as .