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, and the sparkling comedy CHAMPAGNE. With his first sound film BLACKMAIL, Hitchcock kicked off a run of early masterpieces including the train-set mystery THE LADY VANISHES, the man-on-the-run thriller THE 39 STEPS, 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.
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...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1928 • United Kingdom
Starring Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s rare forays into comedy is as effervescent as the titular drink. British silent superstar Betty Balfour is a delight as a spoiled, frivolous flapper whose moneybags dad decides to t...
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...
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...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1931 • United Kingdom
Starring Edmund Gwenn, Helen Haye, C. V. France
Based on a play by John Galsworthy, this drawing-room drama traces the mutually destructive feud that develops between two wealthy families—one composed of old-money traditionalists, the other...
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...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1934 • United Kingdom
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 assassination. This fleet and gripping film is the firs...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1935 • United Kingdom
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 moors, a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1937 • United Kingdom
In Alfred Hitchcock's tale of a wrongly accused man, a man must prove his innocence with the chief constable's daughter as his only help.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1938 • United Kingdom
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 then seems to disappear into thin air. The younger woman...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1939 • United Kingdom
Starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Robert Newton
The last film Alfred Hitchcock made before leaving England for Hollywood centers on a young woman who discovers that her uncle heads a gang of ship-wreckers and killers under the secr...
