Alfred Hitchcock - Signature Collection DVD

North by Northwest:
Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not a spy. And he's certainly no murderer. Nevertheless, Thornhill's a wanted man: enemy agents want him dead, the police want him arrested, and a cool, mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) just plain wants him. A victim of mistaken identity, Thornhill can't afford to make any mistakes of his own - so he embarks on a death-defying run for his life. Relentlessly pursued by plane, train and automobile, Thornhill's cross-country chase finally ends atop Mt. Rushmore where, if he doesn't watch his step, he could be in for a terrible fall. Nominated for three 1959 Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest is a masterful blend of suspense and romance, one of the best and most thrilling movie adventures ever created.

The Wrong Man:
The Wrong Man is like and unlike any other Alfred Hitchcock movie. The story packs tension, the images are spellbinding and the dilemma genuinely frightening. But this time the Master of Suspense dramatises the harrowing true experiences of a man tried for crimes committed by a lookalike robber. Henry Fonda plays musician Manny Balestrero, a man full of visible but unspoken rage at his wrongful arrest. Vera Miles is his distraught wife Rose, driven to madness by the ordeal. And the right man to bring the unsettling facts of the case to vivid screen life with documentary precision is Hitchcock. He made New York City a star of the film and cast real-life Balestrero case witnesses in small roles. He shot in many actual locations, among them the Stork Club, Manny's jail cell and Rose's sanitarium.

Dial M For Murder:
Alfred Hitchcock's screen version of Frederick Knott's stage hit Dial M for Murder is a tasty blend of elegance and suspense casting Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings as the points of a romantic triangle. Kelly won the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review Best Actress Awards for this and two other acclaimed 1954 performances (Hitchcock's Rear Window and her Oscar-honoured work in The Country Girl). She loves Cummings; her husband Milland plots her murder. But when he dials a Mayfair exchange to set the plot in motion, his right number gets the wrong answer and gleaming scissors become a deadly weapon. Dial "M" for the Master of Suspense at his most stylish.

I Confess:
In Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), apparently a model of clerical piety, hears a killer's confession. Eye witnesses point to a priest as the murderer and the sacrament of penance forbids Logan to speak out - even in his own defense - when circumstantial evidence targets Logan as the prime suspect! Academy Award winners Anne Baxter and Karl Malden co-star as a former flame and a police inspector whose attempts to clear Logan only entrap him further. Filmed in Quebec on locations highlighting that city's Old World traditions, I Confess races toward a climax that's unforgettable. And in true Hitchcock fashion, you'll confess to being hooked all the way.

Strangers On A Train:
Strange thing about this trip. So much occurs in pairs. Tennis star Guy (Farley Granger) hates his unfaithful wife. Mysterious Bruno (Robert Walker) hates his father. How perfect for a playful proposal: I’ll kill yours, you kill mine. Now look at how Alfred Hitchcock reinforces the duality of human nature. The more you watch, the more you’ll see. “Isn’t it a fascinating design?” the Master of Suspense often asked. Actually, it’s doubly fascinating. For Hitchcock left behind two versions of Strangers on a Train. The original version (Side A) is an all-time thriller classic. A recently found longer pre-release British print (Side B) offers “a startling amplification of Bruno’s flamboyance, his homoerotic attraction to Guy and his psychotic personality” (Bill Desowitz, Film Comment).

Stage Fright:
In Alfred Hitchcock's world, theatres are where danger stalks the wings, characters are not what they seem, and that "final curtain" can drop any second. The droll Stage Fright springs from that entertaining tradition. Jane Wyman plays drama student Eve Gill, who tries to clear a friend (Richard Todd) being framed for murder by becoming the maid of flamboyant stage star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich). Filming in his native England, Hitchcock merrily juggles elements of humour and whodunnit and puts a game ensemble (Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Joyce Grenfell, Kay Walsh and daughter Patricia Hitchcock) through its paces. No one turns a theatre into a bastion of dread quite like Hitchcock and Stage Fright is proof positive.