Alpe, if Hitch's early talkies didn't connect with you, I'd really recommend you The Lodger (if you haven't yet watched it). Several years ago, I rented a box of two Hitch DVD's with his early works, actually his early talkies, including Rich & Strange (I think called East of Shanghai in the US), Murder, Number 17 and Foreign Correspondent and I came to the same conclusion as you (Rich & Strange was based on a great idea, the story of a couple who got rich by winning at the lottery and who went on a cruise which became a nightmere as though they were doomed for their easy money). Then I rented a DVD of the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much and on it was The Lodger. I wasn't really enthusiastic because I had bad feelings towards silent films after watching Metropolis but surprisingly I really enjoyed it better than the main film of the DVD. I would love to talk about the content of it but I fear spoiling it too much. Only I may refer to the amazing glass ceiling scene, through which ceiling you could see Ivor Novello walking around. It was an idea of Hitch's wife Alma Reville.
You could really consider The Lodger as Hitchcock's first thriller, even the only thriller of his silent film period. I'm not really sure he made another one before The Man Who Knew Too Much. At that time he was rather busy with social dramas.
About Rebecca which doesn't really fit with Hitch's filmography, the way I see it is that it was a commissioned film or a producer film in a way. Selznick wanted to make sure that Hitch could make a country house kind of drama which was pretty popular at that time (I think): William Wyler's Wuthering Heights or Fritz Lang's Secret Behind the Door are those I have in mind. So it was sort of Hitch's passport for Hollywood. His last film of the English period Jamaica Inn also was such kind of film and is the one that convinced Selznick to make him cross the Ocean. I didn't like any of the two.
I'm not a great fan of Frenzy either. Perhaps because it's in his post prime period but then again there are interesting aspect to it. Claude Chabrol argued that it was a film in which Hitch gave a lot more importance to supporting characters than he did in his American period while he did it a lot in his old English period (actually Frenzy was a come back to Britain, if I'm not mistaken, the production was British). I remember for example the cop's wife and their frequent feuds when they had dinner. In Young & Innocent supporting characters also have strong personalities. Also in Frenzy you had a really well done long back tracking shot down the stairs as if to suggest that nothing could save the future victim, she's really isolated with the rapist/murderer.
North by Northwest sure had great visuals too. I liked it very much but it seemed at that time like Hitch needed to renew his art. It's another film based on the fatal accident (like The Man Who Knew Too Much) and the McGuffin (like The Thirty-Nine Steps), the elements that had made the typical Hitchcockian thriller for 25 years. I think he didn't make such kinds of thriller ever after. That's why I think Alpe is right to claim Torn Curtain is rather un-Hitchcock. It's an ordinary spy film. However the fatal accident in North by Northwest as imagined by Ernest Lehman was probably the best ever but it took years for Lehman to make up that script, I think. A character that does not exist invented by an intelligence agency to fool the enemies, that's an amazing idea. Also I'm really fond of that maize field scene or what comes just before. You can see Cary Grant stepping out of the bus in no man's land. 360° around him, nothing happens and that lasts for 6' or so. Hitch especially asked Lehman to come up with such a scene, I think. Such scenes would later be very typical of Sergio Leone's spaghetti western. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a influence.
Lifeboat is one I'm yet to watch and would really love to. I read it was made entirely on a boat and that Hitch still managed a cameo (a photograph of him on a newspaper). Technically wise it was a feat of strength, a bit like Rope's long take approach. Haven't seen Family Plot either. There shouldn't be too many of them left. Haven't seen Juno & the Paycock nor Stage Fright (at least not that I remember).
One that you missed his Strangers on a Train. First I've seen at my English class at school but since I also had to read Patricia Highsmith's novel, the film puzzled me because it was so different from the novel. By the way, did you know that the original script was again very different to the final one? Hitch and his scriptwriters had imagined a homoerotic relationship between Bruno Anthony (called Charlie Bruno in the novel) and Guy Haines but it was not acceptable as per the codes of the time in Hollywood.
However Maurizio Lucidi took that script back to make La vittima designata in 1971 starring French actor Pierre Clementi as the hippie sexually ambiguous Count encouraging an advertising agent into a cross murder. Tomas Milian is playing the advertising agent. He got famous with the roles of peones and revolutionaries in the Italian Zapata films. La vittima designata is a giallo film, a very popular genre in the early seventies in Italy, definitely one of the best films of the genre.
By the way, we cannot talk about Hitch without mentioning Mel Brooks tribute High Anxiety. In there he made a lot of references to Hitch's films, including the ceiling glass scene from The Lodger (it's quite something to have seen that film in the seventies before the DVD and Internet era) but also emulated the Hitchcock style very well with a very dynamic camera.
What strikes me is that Michel Hazanavicius twice emulated Mel Brooks. With The Artist - poor film I heard it say, really a Frenchman willing to imitate the Americans - he revived silent films like Mel Brooks did in the seventies with Silent Movie and in OSS 117 : Rio ne répond plus he made lots of references to Hitchcock's film a bit like in High Anxiety ...
You could really consider The Lodger as Hitchcock's first thriller, even the only thriller of his silent film period. I'm not really sure he made another one before The Man Who Knew Too Much. At that time he was rather busy with social dramas.
About Rebecca which doesn't really fit with Hitch's filmography, the way I see it is that it was a commissioned film or a producer film in a way. Selznick wanted to make sure that Hitch could make a country house kind of drama which was pretty popular at that time (I think): William Wyler's Wuthering Heights or Fritz Lang's Secret Behind the Door are those I have in mind. So it was sort of Hitch's passport for Hollywood. His last film of the English period Jamaica Inn also was such kind of film and is the one that convinced Selznick to make him cross the Ocean. I didn't like any of the two.
I'm not a great fan of Frenzy either. Perhaps because it's in his post prime period but then again there are interesting aspect to it. Claude Chabrol argued that it was a film in which Hitch gave a lot more importance to supporting characters than he did in his American period while he did it a lot in his old English period (actually Frenzy was a come back to Britain, if I'm not mistaken, the production was British). I remember for example the cop's wife and their frequent feuds when they had dinner. In Young & Innocent supporting characters also have strong personalities. Also in Frenzy you had a really well done long back tracking shot down the stairs as if to suggest that nothing could save the future victim, she's really isolated with the rapist/murderer.
North by Northwest sure had great visuals too. I liked it very much but it seemed at that time like Hitch needed to renew his art. It's another film based on the fatal accident (like The Man Who Knew Too Much) and the McGuffin (like The Thirty-Nine Steps), the elements that had made the typical Hitchcockian thriller for 25 years. I think he didn't make such kinds of thriller ever after. That's why I think Alpe is right to claim Torn Curtain is rather un-Hitchcock. It's an ordinary spy film. However the fatal accident in North by Northwest as imagined by Ernest Lehman was probably the best ever but it took years for Lehman to make up that script, I think. A character that does not exist invented by an intelligence agency to fool the enemies, that's an amazing idea. Also I'm really fond of that maize field scene or what comes just before. You can see Cary Grant stepping out of the bus in no man's land. 360° around him, nothing happens and that lasts for 6' or so. Hitch especially asked Lehman to come up with such a scene, I think. Such scenes would later be very typical of Sergio Leone's spaghetti western. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a influence.
Lifeboat is one I'm yet to watch and would really love to. I read it was made entirely on a boat and that Hitch still managed a cameo (a photograph of him on a newspaper). Technically wise it was a feat of strength, a bit like Rope's long take approach. Haven't seen Family Plot either. There shouldn't be too many of them left. Haven't seen Juno & the Paycock nor Stage Fright (at least not that I remember).
One that you missed his Strangers on a Train. First I've seen at my English class at school but since I also had to read Patricia Highsmith's novel, the film puzzled me because it was so different from the novel. By the way, did you know that the original script was again very different to the final one? Hitch and his scriptwriters had imagined a homoerotic relationship between Bruno Anthony (called Charlie Bruno in the novel) and Guy Haines but it was not acceptable as per the codes of the time in Hollywood.
However Maurizio Lucidi took that script back to make La vittima designata in 1971 starring French actor Pierre Clementi as the hippie sexually ambiguous Count encouraging an advertising agent into a cross murder. Tomas Milian is playing the advertising agent. He got famous with the roles of peones and revolutionaries in the Italian Zapata films. La vittima designata is a giallo film, a very popular genre in the early seventies in Italy, definitely one of the best films of the genre.
By the way, we cannot talk about Hitch without mentioning Mel Brooks tribute High Anxiety. In there he made a lot of references to Hitch's films, including the ceiling glass scene from The Lodger (it's quite something to have seen that film in the seventies before the DVD and Internet era) but also emulated the Hitchcock style very well with a very dynamic camera.
What strikes me is that Michel Hazanavicius twice emulated Mel Brooks. With The Artist - poor film I heard it say, really a Frenchman willing to imitate the Americans - he revived silent films like Mel Brooks did in the seventies with Silent Movie and in OSS 117 : Rio ne répond plus he made lots of references to Hitchcock's film a bit like in High Anxiety ...
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