MoMA.org | Interactives | Exhibitions | 1999

Film schedules are available for April and May. The June film schedule will be posted shortly.

Harmony Heaven. 1930. Great Britain. Directed by Thomas Bentley. Screenplay by Arthur Wimperis, Randall Faye, and Frank Launder (additional dialogue). Cinematography by Theodore Sparkuhl. With Polly Ward, Stuart Hall, Trilby Clark, Jack Raine, and Philip Hewland. This may be the only film in the retrospective that does not belong. Hitchcock's name appears nowhere but there has been a persistent idea that Hitchcock acted in some advisory capacity to this early color film and British musical. It was produced by British International Pictures around the same time the company was making Elstree Calling, another musical on which Hitchcock certainly did work. A young song writer neglects his girlfriend for a titled lady. Preserved by the National Film and Television Archives, London. 61 min. Sunday, May 2, 1:00; Monday, May 3, 6:00 (screened together with Elstree Calling)

Hitchcock, Selznick & the End of Hollywood. 1999. Produced, written, and directed by Michael Epstein. Executive producer for American Masters, Susan Lacy. Cinematography by Michael Chin. Edited by Bob Eisenhardt. Music by Richard Einhorn. Narrated by Gene Hackman. A sterling and illuminating documentary that takes off from John Russell Taylor's perceptive observation that when Hitchcock's contract with David O. Selznick was fulfilled in late 1947 it marked an "end of an era" for Hitchcock, Selznick, and Hollywood. Selznick, the tycoon producer, could no longer maintain a studio, and Hitchcock, the director, "ever cautious," would become his own producer. Epstein's film traces the personal lives of and the working relationship between the two filmmakers from Rebecca to The Paradine Case. It places their conflicts, satisfactions, accomplishments, and failures within the context not only of the changing culture of Hollywood but of American society itself. 85 min. Thursday, May 13, 2:30; Friday, May 14, 8:00

I Confess. 1953. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by George Tabori and William Archibald, based on the play Nos deux Consciences, by Paul Anthelme. Cinematography by Robert Burks. With Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, and O. E. Hasse. François Truffaut asks of Hitchcock's I Confess, set in Quebec City and starring Clift as a Jesuit priest, "Isn't it a rather formidable coincidence that the murderer who kills [a man] in order to rob him should happen to confess his crime to the very priest who was being blackmailed by the dead man?...It's the height of the exceptional." Hitchcock replies, "Let's say it comes under the heading of old-fashioned plot...I believe there are no more plots in recent French films." The priest, of course, cannot share the murderer's confession with the police, and is himself accused of the murder. 95 min. Tuesday, May 25, 6:00; Thursday, May 27, 2:30

Jamaica Inn. 1939. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Sidney Gilliat, Joan Harrison, and J. B. Priestley (additional dialogue), based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Cinematography by Harry Stradling and Bernard Knowles. With Maureen O'Hara, Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks, Robert Newton, and Emlyn Williams. This is the last film Hitchcock made in Britain, and he did it while waiting to begin his contract with David O. Selznick in mid-1939. Like his first American film, Rebecca, it was adapted from a novel by du Maurier. This tale, set off the wild Cornish coast in the mid-1800s, concerns "wreckers" who with false lights entice ships to break onto rocks so that their cargo becomes booty. Their headquarters is Jamaica Inn, and their ringleader is a shadowy figure whose identity is supposed to be secret. The film was produced by Charles Laughton who plays the village parson. Hitchcock thought an audience would immediately calculate that you can't fit a big actor into a small role. "You see, this was like doing a who-done-it and making Charles Laughton the butler." Approx. 108 min. Saturday, May 8, 5:45; Monday, May 10, 2:30

Juno and the Paycock (In U.S.: The Shame of Mary Boyle). 1929. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Hitchcock, Alma Reville, and Sean O'Casey, based on the play by O'Casey. Cinematography by Jack Cox. With Sara Allgood, Edward Chapman, John Laurie, Barry Fitzgerald, and Kathleen O'Regan. One of the rare occasions in which Hitchcock adapted a substantial literary work rather than a light novel or play. Admiring the shifts from humor to tragedy, the changing mood, and the well-conceived characters, Hitchcock made Juno and the Paycock because "it was one of my favorite plays so I thought I had to do it." Allgood plays a mother in the midst of the Irish Troubles who cannot prevent her close family from being broken apart. 99 min.
Sunday, April 25, 5:30; Monday, April 26, 2:30

The Lady Vanishes. 1938. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the novel The Wheel Spins, by Ethel Lina White. Cinematography by Jack Cox. With Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty, and Googie Withers. In late 1938 Hitchcock, who had won the New York Film Critics' Award for his direction of The Lady Vanishes, announced that this "will be the last secret agent picture I shall make for a very long time." The film, whose action takes place on and around a train, was one of François Truffaut's favorites. He admitted to seeing it sometimes twice in one week since it was (and still is) often shown in Paris. "Since I know it by heart I tell myself each time that I'm going to ignore the plot, to examine the train and see if it's really moving, or to look at the transparencies, or to study the camera movements inside the compartments. But each time I become so absorbed..." 98 min. Saturday, May 8, 3:00; Monday, May 10, 6:00

Lifeboat. 1944. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Jo Swerling, based on an original subject by John Steinbeck. Cinematography by Glen MacWilliams. With Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, and John Hodiak. A ship is torpedoed. The survivors, a cross section of the war-weary Allied world and a Nazi, float in a lifeboat. Included is the least likely character to be found adrift in the North Atlantic--the glamorous and hardly frazzled Constance Porter, a fashion writer, played by the inimitable Bankhead. Hitchcock told Peter Bogdanovich, "It was really a film without scenery. I made it for the challenge. And it was topical... I appeared to make the Nazi stronger than anyone else [because] in the analogy of war, he was the victor at the time. The others, representing the democracies, hadn't gotten together yet..." Look carefully for Hitchcock's cameo. 96 min. Thursday, May 20, 6:00; Friday, May 21, 11:00

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. 1926. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Eliot Stannard and Hitchcock, based on the novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes. Cinematography by Baron Ventimiglia. With Ivor Novello, June, Malcolm Keen, Marie Ault, and Arthur Chesney. While Jack the Ripper terrorizes London, a landlady comes to believe that one of her tenants is the killer. Hitchcock's third film (his second, The Mountain Eagle, is thought lost) is the first that the filmmaker thought to carry his distinctive signature. Influenced by his time working at Ufa, where Expressionism reigned, Hitchcock transformed a stagebound play into a fluid, suspenseful, and atmospheric work. Silent film with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. 87 min. Friday, April 16, 8:00; Sunday, April 18, 1:00

The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1934. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by A. R. Rawlinson, Edwin Greenwood, and Emlyn Williams (additional dialogue), based on an original subject by D. B. Wyndham-Lewis and Charles Bennett. Cinematography by Curt Courant. With Leslie Banks, Peter Lorre, Edna Best, Nova Pilbeam, and Frank Vosper. In a lecture commissioned by MoMA in 1939, Hitchcock said: "If you can summon up enough courage to select your background and your incidents, you will find you really have something to work out. In The Man Who Knew Too Much, I said, 'I would like to do a film that starts in the winter sporting season. I would like to come to the East End of London. I would like to go to a chapel and to a symphony concert at the Albert Hall.'" So he did, and it was the first of six British films that by 1939 made Hitchcock one of the best known filmmakers in the world. 75 min. Saturday, May 1, 5:00; Tuesday, May 4, 2:30

The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1955. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on a story by Charles Bennett and D. B. Wyndham-Lewis. Cinematography by Robert Burks. With James Stewart, Doris Day, Daniel Gelin, Brenda De Banzie, and Bernard Miles. Hitchcock's only remake. Peter Bogandovich asked the filmmaker why he returned to this material after twenty-two years. "I felt that for an American audience, it contained sentimental elements that would be more interesting than some of the others [films]. The second The Man Who Knew Too Much was more carefully worked than the first one." Shot in part in Marrakech and starring a plucky Day opposite Stewart, the remake also involves a murder--this time a stabbing--a kidnapping, and a concert at Albert Hall that has to be stopped before the cymbals clash. To significant narrative effect, Day sings "Que Sera Sera," a song that has since become iconic. 120 min. Saturday, May 29, 5:00; Thursday, June 3, 2:30

The Manxman. 1928. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Eliot Stannard, based on the novel by Hall Caine. Cinematography by John J. Cox. With Carl Brisson, Malcolm Keen, Anny Ondra, and Randle Ayrton. Ondra, a Polish-born film star who began making films in Britain in 1928, plays Kate, a young woman loved by two friends--a fisherman who cannot afford to marry and a lawyer who can. True love is thwarted, Kate becomes pregnant, suicide is attempted, and a happy/unhappy ending is finally achieved. Although the film is distinguished by some exciting location work, Hitchcock felt that the only interest in this "banal" film is that it was his last silent movie. Silent film with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. 98 min. Friday, April 23, 2:30; Tuesday, April 27, 6:00

Marnie. 1964. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Jay Presson Allen, based on the novel by Winston Graham. Cinematography by Robert Burks. With Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Louise Satham, and Martin Gabel. Marnie is perhaps Hitchcock's most enigmatic work. On the surface it is a perverse love story with little suspense played against sets that are at once sumptuous and artificial. An elegant young woman, Marnie (Hedren), is a liar, a compulsive thief, and a "decent" (frigid) girl. Her employer, Mark (Connery), a wealthy widower, discovers her embezzling from him, and immediately desires her. He becomes obsessed, and she for a time remains chaste, while the relationship becomes almost sadistic. Although he may enjoy her suffering, he seeks a trauma to liberate Marnie from herself. Although the film seems richer now than it did thirty-five years ago, it still is puzzling. 129 min. Friday, June 11, 8:15; Saturday, June 12, 2:00

Mary (Sir John greift ein). 1930. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Alma Reville, based on the novel and play Enter Sir John, by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson. Adapted by Hitchcock and Walter Mycroft. Cinematography by John J. Cox. With Alfred Abel, Olga Tchekowa, Paul Graetz, Lotte Stein, and E. Arenot. Mary is the German version of Murder(!). Hitchcock, blaming himself for not rewriting according to the nuances of German, felt Mary not to be the success of its English counterpart. In German without English subtitles. 80 min. Saturday, April 24, 5:00; Tuesday, April 27, 2:30 (screened together with Murder(!)).

Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 1941. USA. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Norman Krasna. Cinematography by Harry Stradling. With Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson, and Philip Merivale. In spite of its stiletto edge this screwball comedy is an atypical Hitchcock film. A Park Avenue couple, prone to bickering, learn that a legal technicality has voided their marriage. The man (Montgomery) and the woman (Lombard) try to redefine their relationship before they become man and wife. Hitchcock said he made the film "as a gesture to Carole Lombard. The script was already written (by Norman Krasna), and I just came in and did it." 95 min. Thursday, May 13, 6:00; Friday, May 14, 2:30

Murder(!). 1930. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Alma Reville, based on the novel and play Enter Sir John, by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson. Cinematography by Jack Cox. With Norah Baring, Herbert Marshall, Phyllis Konstam, Edward Chapman, and Miles Mander. Although Hitchcock disdained the whodunit as an emotionless "you-JUST-wait-for-the-answer" crossword or jigsaw puzzle, he was proud of Murder(!). It was "the first important who-done-it picture I made. It's the first time I ever used the voice over the face--without the lips moving--for stream-of-consciousness." A young actress is condemned to death for murder. A juror (Marshall) sets out to prove her innocence. The film was shot simultaneously in German with Alfred Abel as the Marshall character. 108 min. Saturday, April 24, 3:00; Tuesday, April 27, 2:30 (screened together with Mary)