British Hitchcock

British Hitchcock

11 Episodes

Before he took Hollywood by storm, Alfred Hitchcock was already renowned as a master stylist and storyteller in his native Britain, where he was perhaps the leading director of the late silent and early sound eras. Strongly influenced by German Expressionism, Hitchcock’s silent films are triumphs of visual invention, pushing the medium to new expressive heights in works like THE LODGER, his atmospheric take on the Jack the Ripper tale. With the coming of sound, Hitchcock kicked off a run of early masterpieces including the train-set mystery THE LADY VANISHES and the underrated nail-biter SABOTAGE. Foreshadowing many of the themes and tropes he would rework obsessively throughout his American career, Hitchcock’s British films display the keen psychological insight, dazzling stylistic innovation, dark wit, and virtuoso set-pieces that would earn him the moniker “the Master of Suspense.”

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British Hitchcock
  • British Hitchcock Teaser

    Episode 1

  • The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

    Episode 2

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1927 • United Kingdom
    Starring Ivor Novello, June Tripp

    With his third feature film, THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG, Alfred Hitchcock took a major step toward greatness and made what he would come to consider his true directorial debut. This haunting sile...

  • Downhill

    Episode 3

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1927 • United Kingdom
    Starring Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Norman McKinnel

    That’s the direction things go for boarding-school student and star rugby player Roddy Berwick (celebrated songwriter and matinee idol Ivor Novello) when he falls from golden boy to public di...

  • Blackmail

    Episode 4

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1929 • United Kindgom
    Starring Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, John Longden

    Alfred Hitchcock’s—and Britain’s—first talkie finds the director using sound technology as inventively as he used the camera. Anny Ondra (prototype for the many Hitchcock blondes to come) play...

  • Murder!

    Episode 5

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1930 • United Kingdom
    Starring Herbert Marshall, Norah Baring, Phyllis Konstam

    One of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature obsessions—the “wrong man” motif he would return to time and again—receives one of its earliest treatments in this innovative whodunit. After a you...

  • Rich and Strange

    Episode 6

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1931 • United Kingdom
    Starring Henry Kendall, Joan Barry

    Taking its all-too-appropriate title from “The Tempest,” this fascinatingly offbeat satiric drama concerns a stuck-in-a-rut young couple who, upon coming into a generous inheritance, immediately use the mo...

  • The Man Who Knew Too Much

    Episode 7

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1934 • United Kingdom
    Starring Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks, Edna Best

    An ordinary British couple vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassina...

  • The 39 Steps

    Episode 8

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1935 • United Kingdom
    Starring Robert Donat, Madeline Carroll, Lucie Mannheim

    A heart-racing spy story by Alfred Hitchcock, THE 39 STEPS follows Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) as he stumbles upon a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish ...

  • Sabotage

    Episode 9

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1936 • United Kingdom
    Starring Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, John Loder

    This loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel “The Secret Agent” is one of the high-water marks of Alfred Hitchcock’s early British period. Sylvia Sidney is the unsuspecting wife of a London c...

  • Young and Innocent

    Episode 10

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1937 • United Kingdom
    Starring Derrick De Marney, Nova Pilbeam, Percy Marmont

    Alfred Hitchcock’s delightfully entertaining, often overlooked tale of a wrongly accused man follows a young writer (Derrick De Marney) who, when he becomes the prime suspect in the murde...

  • The Lady Vanishes

    Episode 11

    Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1938 • United Kingdom
    Starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas

    In Alfred Hitchcock’s most quick-witted and devilish comic thriller, the beautiful Margaret Lockwood, traveling across Europe by train, meets a charming spinster (Dame May Whitty), who t...