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Rebecca is an ageless, timeless adult movie about a woman who marries a widower but fears she lives in the shadow of her predecessor. This was Hitchcock's first American feature, and it garnered the Best Picture statue at the 1941 Academy Awards. In today's films, most twists and surprises are ridiculous or just gratuitous, so it's sobering to look back on this film where every revelation not only shocks, but makes organic sense with the story line. Laurence Olivier is dashing and weak, fierce and cowed. Joan Fontaine is strong yet submissive, defiant yet accommodating. There isn't a false moment or misstep, but the film must have killed the employment outlook of any women named Danvers for about 20 years. Brilliant stuff. --Keith Simanton

• Commentary by film scholar Leonard J. Leff, author of Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood • Isolated music and effects track • New digital film and sound restoration • Rare screen, hair, makeup and costume tests including Vivian Leigh, Anne Baxter, Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan and Joan Fontaine • Footage from the 1940 Annual Academy Awards ceremony, at which Rebecca won Best Picture and Best Cinematography Oscars • Hundreds of behind-the-scenes photos chronicling the film's production from location scouting, set photos and wardrobe continuity to ads, posters, lobby cards and promotional memorabilia • Illustrated essay on Daphne du Maurier, author of the book on which Rebecca is based • Hitchcock on Rebecca: excerpts from the director's conversations with filmmaker Francois Truffaut • Phone interviews with star Joan Fontaine and Dame Judith Anderson from 1986 • Hitchcock's casting notes • Re-issue trailer • Production correspondance and casting notes • 1939 test screening questionnaire • Complete broadcast of the 1938 Campbell Playhouse radio adaptation, starring Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre players, including an interview with Daphne du Maurier • 1941 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast starring Ronald Coleman & Ida Lupino, including and an interview with David O.. Selznick • 1950 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast starring Laurence Olivier & Vivian Leigh • Liner notes by Robin Wood, author of the groundbreaking book Hitchcock's Film and Hitchcock's Film Revisited in a 22-page booklet • Number of discs: 2

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Robert Cummings stars as Barry Kane, a patriotic munitions worker who is falsely accused of sabotage, in this wartime thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. Plastered across the front page of every newspaper and hated by the nation, Kane's only hope of clearing his name is to find the real villain. If this sounds a bit like Hitchcock's later North by Northwest, it is. There are interesting echoes throughout, including a heart-stopping sequence on top of a national monument. But the most interesting thing about Saboteur is the frequency with which characters demonstrate their willingness to obstruct the police, going on nothing more than the fact that Kane seems like a stand-up guy. They do, again and again, apparently just because good people can spot other good people. Saboteur was made during the thick of World War II, so there are a few passages of heavy-handed jingoism to get through but they're relatively painless. The script as a whole is a clever one--Algonquin wit Dorothy Parker shares a screenwriting credit, and her trademark zingers make for a terrific mix of humor and suspense. Saboteur is a pleasure whether you're a die-hard Hitchcock fan or just someone who likes a good nail-biter. --Ali Davis

• Black & White, Closed-captioned • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • Saboteur: A Closer Look • Storyboards • Alfred Hitchcock's Sketches • Production Photographs • Full-screen format

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Alfred Hitchcock considered this 1943 thriller to be his personal favorite among his own films, and although it's not as popular as some of Hitchcock's later work, it's certainly worthy of the master's admiration. Scripted by playwright Thornton Wilder and inspired by the actual case of a 1920's serial killer known as "The Merry Widow Murderer," the movie sets a tone of menace and fear by introducing a psychotic killer into the small-town comforts of Santa Rosa, California. That's where young Charlie (Teresa Wright) lives with her parents and two younger siblings, and where murder is little more than a topic of morbid conversation for their mystery-buff neighbor (Hume Cronyn). Charlie was named after her favorite uncle, who has just arrived for an extended visit, and at first Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) gets along famously with his admiring niece. But the film's chilling prologue has already revealed Uncle Charlie's true identity as the notorious Merry Widow Murderer, and the suspense grows almost unbearable when young Charlie's trust gives way to gradual dread and suspicion. Through narrow escapes and a climactic scene aboard a speeding train, this witty thriller strips away the façade of small-town tranquility to reveal evil where it's least expected. And, of course, it's all done in pure Hitchcockian style. --Jeff Shannon

• Black & White, Closed-captioned • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film • Production Drawings by Art Director Robert Boyle • Production Photographs • Full-screen format

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While Alfred Hitchcock made several well-known wartime films with intrigue and ambiguous love themes at their core (Saboteur, Notorious), he also made a pair of far less familiar works: two French-language propaganda shorts, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache. The two rarely screened works were actually official productions of the British Ministry of Information, designed as tributes to the Resistance movement against the occupying Nazi forces in France. Hitchcock was paid a token fee, but they were really a labor of love for him. Despite that, Bon Voyage received limited play in France and Aventure Malgache was shelved completely by the Brits. Neither movie played in America. It's easy to see why:Bon Voyage, the better of the two, concerns a Royal Air Force gunner whose escape from a German prison is aided by a fellow fugitive he has only just met, and by a succession of Resistance workers who help him get out of the country. Interrogated back in London, the officer discovers he was actually an unwitting dupe whose flight helped the Germans locate and destroy key links in the underground organization.

Equally bleak, Aventure Malgache is a complex, swiftly paced remembrance by a French actor about the duplicity of Vichy collaborators in French-controlled Madagascar. The narrator, making himself up to play his own life in a staged version of past events he describes, was imprisoned by the Vichy government for his Resistance tactics. In essence, the film is about dissension among the French people when it comes to dealing with the Germans. It's a little hard to imagine why Hitchcock would have thought these two morally shaded stories would bolster freedom-fighting spirits. But they each have elements that resonate deliciously with his career-long pet obsessions and themes. Bon Voyage, particularly, is of interest as the tale of an innocent man who unwittingly crosses the line into culpability for evil, a moral murkiness that is key to many Hitchcock films from The Lodger through Frenzy. As a piece of the legacy of one of the most important filmmakers in history, this rare double bill is well worth the visit. --Tom Keogh

• Black & White • 4.5" x 7" original theatrical poster replica

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Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali--complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"--i.e., the power of pure visual associations. Miklós Rózsa's haunting score (which features a creepy theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography, and special visual effects. --Jim Emerson

DVD Special features:
• Commentary by Hitchcock film scholar Marian Keane and film historian Rudy Behlmer, editor of Memo from David O. Selznick • Theatrical trailer(s) • New digital film and sound restoration • Complete broadcast of the 1948 Lux Radio Theater adaptation, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten • Rare production, publicity, rear projection photos, as well as promotional posters and lobby cards • Production correspondence • Collection of trailers & teasers • Script excerpts of deleted scenes and alternate endings • Excerpts from the short story "The Song of the Dragon," source material for Notorious • Rare newsreel footage of Bergman and Hitchcock • Liner notes by Hitchcock scholar William Rothman, author of the landmark study Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze • Isolated music score and effects track

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This minor 1948 film by Alfred Hitchcock beats a familiar Hitchcockian drum: an attorney (Gregory Peck), in love with the client (Alida Valli) he is defending on a murder charge, implicates himself in her guilt by trying to put the blame on another man. The no-one-is-innocent theme may be consistent with Hitchcock's best films and worldview, but this is one of the movies that got away from his crucial passion for the plastic side of creative directing. Stuck in a courtroom for much of the story, the film is fit to burst with possibility but is pinned down like a freshly caught butterfly in someone's airless collection. --Tom Keogh

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An experimental film masquerading as a standard Hollywood thriller. The plot of Rope is simple and based on a successful stage play [Rope's End]: two young men (John Dall and Farley Granger) commit murder, more or less as an intellectual exercise. They hide the body in their large apartment, then throw a dinner party. Will the body be discovered? Director Alfred Hitchcock, fascinated by the possibilities of the long-take style, decided to shoot this story as though it were happening in one long, uninterrupted shot. Since the camera can only hold one 10-minute reel at a time, Hitchcock had to be creative when it came time to change reels, disguising the switches as the camera passed behind someone's back or moved behind a lamp. In later years Hitchcock wrote off the approach as misguided, and Rope may not be one of Hitchcock's top movies, but it's still a nail-biter. They don't call him the Master of Suspense for nothing. James Stewart, as a suspicious professor, marks his first starring role for Hitchcock, a collaboration that would lead to the masterpieces Rear Window and Vertigo. --Robert Horton

• Color, Closed-captioned • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • Rope Unleashed • Production Photographs • Full-screen format