I've been a film fan for most of my life, but I've skipped a lot of the typical cinematic milestones. For example, I've never seen a Godfather film. I've seen next to no Hitchcock. I haven't seen a number of latter-day fixtures like The Matrix and, until recently, had neglected many of the celebrated cornerstones of "highbrow" cinema, such as The Seventh Seal, Seven Samurai, The 400 Blows, and 8½ (note to self: if I ever make a "highbrow" film, be sure to include a number in the title).
All of which isn't to say that I don't take all of this seriously. Far from it. The trouble is that my M.O. has always been to pick a narrow subject area and run it into the ground, which means that I've seen virtually everything available by D.W. Griffith, but I still haven't seen The Godfather.
So—in the spirit of playing to y strengths, I've decided to run Hitchcock into the ground. I will watch Alfred Hitchcock's complete run of feature films (or at least those that I can get my hands on—some of his early pictures are pretty scarce) and I'm going to share what I think of them. And I'm going to do it as someone who is relatively unacquainted with his work, so it'll be a real voyage of discovery. I love the little of Hitchcock that I've seen. I can't wait to see the rest.
I'll get started shortly after Christmas with Hitchcock's first feature, The Pleasure Garden. Join me—it'll be fun!
(Originally posted on Movie Literacy on December 24th, 2010)
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