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When the poet W.H. Auden called the years leading up to World War Two "a low dishonest decade" in his poem "September 1, 1939", you have to wonder if this was simply a case of perfect hindsight. Were sensible people really living for years with the near certainty that another war was on its way? If so, it must have been intolerable; if not, it would explain a lot. Proof of this dismal mood is actually abundant even in entertainment – like Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps, one of the director's earliest and greatest successes. It's the story...

VIDEOWhile watching this video of an out of control chairlift with skiers, the scene might seem eerily familiar. If so, that is because you are conjuring up memories of the spinning out of control carousel in Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train."

VIDEOOne of my great fears is falling. Falling from heights. Actually more of a panic than a just a fear. And I am sure there are a lot of you out there who suffer from the same fear. And since this is Friday, or "Viernes" in Spanish, I present Vertigo Viernes to add yet more fuel to your fear of heights.

Alfred Hitchcock changed the shape and trajectory of cinema with titles such as The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, Rear Window, and Psycho. His fascinating, semi-voyeuristic account of the human condition set the form on a completely different course that was to open it up to future auteurs such as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, helping to create the incredibly complex medium it is today. It was now more cerebral and delved into the complex, Jungian recesses of the psyche, exploring death, murder, and sex in a forensic way that had never been done before. It’s indicative of the pioneering...

After exploring this area for 1940’s ‘Rebecca,’ the legendary director made a lasting connectionThere are countless Alfred Hitchcock biographies, and many of them mention that he had an estate in the Santa Cruz area. But they never seem very interested in why he chose Scotts Valley as his home away from home—which is curious, since a sense of place was extremely important to the legendary director. He rose up through the ranks of a very regimented film industry in his native Britain, and was stung by accusations that he’d forgotten his roots after moving to the U.S. He found his...

Alfred Hitch cock Presents. Middle aged gentleman, gets bored with his perfectly nice, attractive wife and decides to have an affair with another lady for some excitement. He thinks he wants to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, but he is n for a surprise. Nice twist in the tail. Only 12:24 long. A laugh if you have 12 minutes.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of North by Northwest. Here's what Mark had to say about this classic film a few years ago: Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest contains what I think of as the all-time great strangers-on-a-train scene, and one I always recall if I'm in the dining car of an at least potentially exotic choo-choo - the Eurostar, say - and a glamorous femme comes sashaying down the aisle, even if she does park herself at some other guy's table. In a lifetime's travel, everyone should have a North by Northwest moment: on a...

Lily James is to play the lead role in a film remake of Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic novel Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock’s cult 1940 adaptation of the psychological thriller, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, won an Oscar for best picture. [snip] Hollywood actor Armie Hammer will take Olivier’s role as de Winter, who along with his creepy housekeeper Mrs Danvers still appears obsessed with his eponymous late wife Rebecca.

Alfred Hitchcock is more than just the master of suspense. Throughout his career, the legendary director transformed cinema as we know it today through his unique visual eye, masterful storytelling, and incredible showmanship. In celebration of his birthday on Sunday, we look back on his most memorable works -- ranging from the crowd-pleasing "Psycho" to a movie regarded as one of the best ever made, "Vertigo." Here are the 13 Alfred Hitchcock movies you need to watch in your lifetime:

We invite movie lovers and online learners from around the world to join us for a free, flexible online course, TCM Presents The Master of Suspense: 50 Years of Hitchcock (#Hitchcock50). This is the third free online course to be offered by TCM and Ball State, following Film Noir (2015) and Slapstick Comedy (2016). In this Hitchcock course, enjoy multimedia course materials, daily in-app messaging with movie clips, mini-games, and ongoing interactions with fellow film fans on the TCM message boards or at #Hitchcock50. We will explore 40+ Hitchcock films from his first film in the silent era, The Lodger...

On April 29, 1980, the world lost a great storyteller when Alfred Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense,” died in his Bel Aire home at the age of 81. His repertoire included more than 50 films in the suspense genre – films such as “The Birds,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and others. The 2012 film “Hitchcock”, which purported to tell the director's life story, gave little attention to his faith. Instead, it spotlighted Hitch's alleged behind-the-scenes discord with his wife of 54 years, screenwriter Alma Reville, and his domineering approach to actors on the set of his films. Two biographies...

FULL TITLE: It's political correctness gone Psycho! Remake won't show the killer cross-dressing in a shower scene in order to avoid 'transphobia' It is the chilling moment from the classic film Psycho that once seen can never be forgotten. Deranged motel proprietor Norman Bates, dressed up in his mother’s clothes, launches a murderous knife attack on a defenceless guest in the shower. But now the scene from the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh has been remade, but with a crucial difference. Bates is no longer wearing women’s clothes – for fear of damaging the image...

Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos sometimes lasted just a few brief seconds, and sometimes a little while longer. Either way, they became a signature of Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and fans made a sport of seeing whether they could spot the elusive director. From 1927 to 1976, Hitchcock made 37 appearances in total, and they’re all nicely catalogued by Hitchcock.TV and the clip above. If you’re hungry for a good film over the long Labor Day weekend, then don’t miss our collection 22 Free Hitchcock Films Online, which includes The 39 Steps, The...

Sometimes restrictions serve to bring out our creativity in startling and memorable ways There was a time in the early years of motion pictures when a kiss was the ultimate expression of love. Anything beyond a brush of the lips was left to the imagination, and love scenes were actually more potent because of it.In the 1930s a strict code dictated to directors and writers the lines of demarcation between what was permissible, not only for lovemaking, but also for vulgarity and other delicate themes. Though marked in part by what was considered backward in the era [i.e., miscegenation – ed],...

World famous silhouettes, instantly recognizable:And now we have a new iconic silhouette:I know the load grows heavier by the day, butt carry on troops.Posted from: Michelle Obama’s Mirror

A very important movie about the Holocaust made its way to New York City for the first time this week at the end of a tortuous journey that began 70 years ago when Allied forces and newsreel cameramen stumbled into Nazi concentration camps. Called “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” it is as unadorned as its title, a document shot in the moment to capture forever evidence of the unimaginable. Made under the auspices of the British Ministry of Information, produced by Sidney Bernstein, the founder of Granada Television, assembled with advice from Alfred Hitchcock, the movie was meant to ram...

In 1945, Britain’s army film unit commissioned a sprawling doc on the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, supervised by Hitchcock. A new film explores the forgotten masterpiece. It is, perhaps, the greatest documentary never made. Back in 1945, Sidney Bernstein, the chief of the Psychological Warfare Film Section of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, was commissioned to create the definitive documentary chronicling the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Bernstein’s aim was, in his words, to “prove one day that this had actually happened” and have it serve as “a lesson to all mankind as well as to the...

After nine decades in the business, the former collaborator of Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles is still looking for his next great role. The earliest surviving footage of broadcast television in America is a fragment of "The Streets of New York," an adaptation of playwright Dion Boucicault's 19th-century drama, aired by the experimental New York NBC affiliate W2XBS on August 31, 1939. All that now remains of the hour-long program is a silent, 11-minute kinescope, filmed off a TV screen and archived at the Paley Center For Media. And there, in those primitive flickering images, you can catch...