Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was and remains the most popular filmmaker in film history. Born in London, the son of a fruit bowl, he directed 51 films over seven decades since his 1925 debut with The Garden of Joy . Five times Oscar nominee for best director, never won the statuette. After making 11 silent films and 16 sound films in England, her fame multiplied in Hollywood after Rebecca (1940). Four years after his last movie ( Family plot, 1976), obese and hypertensive, with his kidneys and liver deteriorated by his love of food and drink, with his heart protected by a pacemaker, Hitchcock died at his Bel Air home on April 29, 1980. He was cremated and its ashes were dumped in the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the 40th anniversary of the death of the so-called "magician of suspense" will be celebrated. Always current and influential , Hitchcock will be remembered in the coming weeks. Filmin has 28 films in its catalog, several of them silent or also corresponding to its English sound period. TCM, on Wednesdays in April, will broadcast 18 of his films, all from his long North American stage.

Cabrera Infante wrote: " Hitchcock, like Graham Greene, like GK Chesterton, believes in God, but also believes in entertainment ." God and entertainment. Born into a very Catholic family and educated by the Jesuits, Hitchcock was a believer and a practitioner throughout his life. His Catholic training is reflected in his cinema in two central and related themes: guilt and sex. The false culprit, so often present in his cinema of criminal intrigue. And guilty sex, the moral repression of desire, punished desire, repressed eroticism that leads to sadism and crime. Women (Joan Fontaine, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman ...), so often blonde and presumably frigid, murdered or not in the overflow of a tortuous sexual drive (for feeling guilty) or as a substitute for a feared sex (for knowing that they are sinful) ). Hitchcock said that a copula should be filmed as a crime, and a crime as a copula . Married since 1926 to the petite, intelligent, strong and determined Alma Reville, his close collaborator in the scripts and in the editing of several of his films, father of an only daughter, Patricia, Hitchcock, with a narcissistic personality - his brief appearance in his movies-, also complexed by his fatness and by the rejection that this could provoke among women, he starred in notorious awkward harassments with several of his actresses, especially with Tippi Hedren ( Marnie, the thief ).

It is not entirely accurate, but it is considered good that until the appearance, in 1967, of the book of his conversations with François Truffaut (in Alliance and Akal), who claims him as an author who owns his own world and some narrative forms personal, the filmmaker -also put in homes, between 1955 and 1962, with the 268 episodes of his mystery series Alfred Hitchcock presents ... - was considered as a craftsman of entertainment, as a director of shows for mass consumption. The absorbing interest of his neat criminal intrigues; the suggestive opening credits (Saúl Bass!); the twists and turns of effect of its plots; the use of suspense, that is, of the threat the viewer knows hangs over a character who ignores it; the strong psychological ingredient together with constant action and of uncertain result ; frequent recourse is to extreme drama or, conversely, to humor; the underground or not so underground erotic component; complex filming also frequent in spectacular settings; the visual power of his frames and the movement of his camera, reinforced by montage and music (Bernard Herrmann!), all this, and much more, made Hitchcock, yes, a commercial director until, without ceasing to be , his constant themes and the fixed features of his staging were cleared , indicating the existence of the style and universe of a unique artist.

Recall nine titles that, being common to the Filmin catalog and TCM programming, are undoubtedly among our favorites: Rebeca (1940), Sabotage (1942), The Rope (1948), The indiscreet window (1954), But ... who killed Harry? (1955), Vertigo (1958), Psychosis (1960), The Birds (1963) and Frenzy (1972). Let's check on the internet what other movies are available on those or other channels and platforms. It is an impossible mission, even making a list of twenty titles - let the reader try it -, to consign all the Hitchcock films that we have alive in our memory. Very few filmmakers - perhaps only John Ford - have left more viewers with such a wide and deep footprint . In addition to watching these days, among our four walls, Hitchcock movies to pay tribute to him and give ourselves another tribute with a net pleasure, let's also read. To the bibliography on genius, another title has just been added in Spanish, signed by several illustrious authors: I confess. Interviews and conversations with Alfred Hitchcock (Cult Books.

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