By Travis Johnson
Alfred Hitchcock isn’t called the master of suspense for nothing. He’s one one of the best filmmakers ever to set his eye to a viewfinder, but he’s also one of those filmmakers that a lot of cineastes keep promising themselves to get caught up with at some point down the track.
Well, that time is now – or, more precisely, July 21, when the Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival hits Cremorne’s Hayden Orpheum. 16 fantastic films from Hitch’s Hollywood period are getting thrown onto the big screen once more, and every single one of them is an absolute, unmissable classic: Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, I Confess, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho.
In addition, the festival includes the Australian premiere of the acclaimed documentary, Hitchcock/Truffaut, which uses the pair’s famed 1962 interview series and the resultant book as a jumping off point to explore Hitchcock’s incredible mastery of his medium and subsequent influence on the film world. Directed by Kent Jones, the film includes interviews with such luminaries as Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, and Paul Schrader.
For full details, head for the Orpheum’s official site.
