Join the BMFI for a series on the early works of Alfred Hitchcock at the Gershman YMCA.
From the BMFI:
Alfred Hitchcock did not simply emerge from the primordial cinematic ooze a fully-formed filmmaker, in the mid-1950s, to create classics like Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Indeed, by that time Hitch had been directing pictures in Europe and the U.S. for nearly thirty years, over the course of which he developed his signature style and formulated his thematic approach to filmmaking.
While this class does not venture all the way back to Hitchcock's German films of the 1920s, it does cover some of the director's better known British work, such as The Lady Vanishes (1938), as well as his initial forays into Hollywood. These include his very first (and nearly his last) American film, Rebecca (1940), and Suspicion (1941), both of which star Joan Fontaine as a young wife who gets more than she bargained for after marrying Laurence Olivier and Cary Grant, respectively.
These early pictures contain some of the elements for which Hitch would later become famous: (blonde) women in trouble, danger in everyday places, Machiavellian matrons, and of course, his iconic cameos—despite being made by the Master of Suspense when he was but a craftsman.
Please note: This course meets at The Gershman Y (401 South Broad Street, Philadelphia)
