I Heart Alfred

Join us for Hitchcock week, September 10 - 12 at the Blue Starlite!

The films of Alfred Hitchcock were my first exposure to truly great film.

Sure, I grew up with the likes of Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park and other modern classics, which are great in their own right, and I watched long-time favorites like The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music every time they aired on TV starting at a very young age, but it was Hitchcock who turned me from a kid who really liked movies to a budding young film enthusiast.

For a while when I was in high school, the AMC network played a different Hitchcock film (or several) every Sunday evening.  And so it became a tradition - homework, family time, Hitchcock.

Prior to that I was a little scared of Hitchcock films, thinking they were all horror films (which, in the mind of a 14-year-old, meant they were slasher flicks).   So I was wonderfully surprised when they were more suspenseful than scary, meaning more of this…

than this…

I marveled at Hitchcock’s masterful storytelling as well as the remarkable clarity of the film quality, as viewed on a pre-HD television.  His work was so striking that I started to recognize it when flipping through channels; even if I didn’t know it was a Hitchcock film, I still knew it was a Hitchcock film.  Recognizing an artist’s work based on its style was an entirely new experience for me. Not only that but I was excited to watch a movie without commercial interruptions (we weren't an HBO or a Disney Channel household).

I seem to recall my Hitchcock phase being relatively short-lived.  Some months later I tuned in one Sunday night to find a non-Hitchcock film playing (this was long before Sunday Night Mad Men), but during that time I took in The Birds, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 and the 1934 versions), Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, and most of Psycho, among others.

Most of these films I haven't seen since those high school-aged viewings, so it's with great excitement - and a little nostalgia - that I invite you to join us for screenings of Rear Window, Psycho, and The Birds in various double feature combinations this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at the Blue Starlite.  You can get your tickets here.

In closing, I leave you with Alfred Hitchcock riding a magic carpet, while rocking a pretty great scarf.  Because why not?