Hitchcock Boxed Set

[t_guy]

As mentioned elsewhere on LJ - or possibly the www - my parents gave me an Alfred Hitchcock Boxed Set (of DVDs) for my birthday, including fourteen films: the eclectic or bizarre selection as follows

Comments

[giddyoldgoat]

These are all the Hitchcock films currently owned by Universal; Warner Bros also do a nice set of the Hitch movies THEY own (Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, The Wrong Man, Stage Fright, I Confess, Dial M for Murder) and there are various cheapo packages of out-of-copyright, silent era Hitchcock flicks.

Funnily enough I re-watched my DVD of Frenzy only the other day: Hitchcock's most underrated movie?

[t_guy]

Ah, it's a copyright matter. I should have known.

I might look up that Warner Bros. set... but I never really got on with The Wrong Man or I Confess or Stage Fright (though the other three are firm faves), despite two of them being key films re the matters of (RC) guilt and doubles.

Frenzy was the first DVD I watched from this set, and, yes, I'd easily rate it as Hitch's most under-rated work. It has several classic elements, the ones that spring to mind being the doubling/guilt theme (transerence of guilt, the Cahiers squad call it) and the thread of black humour (seemingly all food-connected: the potato truck and the Inspector's wife's cooking).

I see it as an attempt to make a film about a serial rapist/murderer in an environment far removed from the glamourous world of Hollywood (To Catch a Thief, for example) or international espionage (North by Northwest, its immediate predecessor Topaz). Note that there's no Cary Grant or Sean Connery here.

Also: this film does for rape what Torn Curtain does for murder. It's not