Amazon.com essential video From its cleverly choreographed opening sequence to its heart-stopping climax on a rampant carousel, this 1951 Hitchcock classic readily earns its reputation as one of the director's finest examples of timeless cinematic suspense. It's not just a ripping-good thriller but a film student's delight and a perversely enjoyable battle of wits between tennis pro Guy (Farley Granger) and his mysterious, sycophantic admirer, Bruno (Robert Walker), who proposes a "criss-cross" scheme of traded murders. Bruno agrees to kill Guy's unfaithful wife, in return for which Guy will (or so it seems) kill Bruno's spiteful father. With an emphasis on narrative and visual strategy, Hitchcock controls the escalating tension with a master's flair for cinematic design, and the plot (co-scripted by Raymond Chandler) is so tightly constructed that you'll be white-knuckled even after multiple viewings. Better still, the two-sided DVD edition of this enduring classic includes both the original version of the film and also the longer prerelease British print, which offers a more overt depiction of Bruno's flamboyant and dangerous personality, and his homoerotic attraction to Guy by way of his deviously indecent proposal. In accordance with the cautious censorship guidelines of the period, Hitchcock would later tame these elements of Walker's memorable performance by trimming and altering certain scenes, so the differences between the original and prerelease versions provide an illuminating illustration of censorship's effect on the story's thematic intensity. Beyond all the historical footnotes and film-buff fascination, Strangers on a Train remains one of Hitchcock's crowning achievements and a suspenseful classic that never loses its capacity to thrill and delight. --Jeff Shannon

• Closed-captioned, Widescreen • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • Hitchcock newsreel footage

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Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder. Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered. Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives. At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland

Production notes
• "Rear Window Ethics: Remembering and Restoring a Hitchcock Classic" (2000, 55 min.) • Featurette: A Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael Hayes • Production photographs • Re-release trailer narrated by James Stewart • DVD-ROM features include the original script • Widescreen anamorphic format

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A busman's holiday for Alfred Hitchcock, this 1955 black comedy concerns a pesky corpse that becomes a problem for a quiet, Vermont neighborhood. Shirley MacLaine makes her film debut as one of several characters who keep burying the body and finding it unburied again. Hitchcock clearly enjoys conjuring the autumnal look and feel of the story, and he establishes an important, first-time alliance with composer Bernard Herrmann, whose music proved vital to the director's next half-dozen or so films. But for now, The Trouble with Harry is a lark, the mischievous side of Hitchcock given free reign. --Tom Keogh • Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen • Theatrical trailer(s) • The Trouble with Harry Isn't Over • Production Photographs • Widescreen anamorphic format

Amazon.com essential video Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own 1934 spy thriller is an exciting event in its own right, with several justifiably famous sequences. James Stewart and Doris Day play American tourists who discover more than they wanted to know about an assassination plot. When their son is kidnapped to keep them quiet, they are caught between concern for him and the terrible secret they hold. When asked about the difference between this version of the story and the one he made 22 years earlier, Hitchcock always said the first was the work of a talented amateur while the second was the act of a seasoned professional. [In the first movie, the wife is able to take pro-active measures to rescue her son. In this remake, the wife is 'just' a woman. All she can do is scream.] Indeed, several extraordinary moments in this update represent consummate filmmaking, particularly a relentlessly exciting Albert Hall scene, with a blaring symphony, an assassin's gun, and Doris Day's scream. Along with Hitchcock's other films from the mid-1950s to 1960 (including Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho), The Man Who Knew Too Much is the work of a master in his prime. --Tom Keogh

• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • The Making of • Production Photographs • Widescreen anamorphic format

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Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson

• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby • Commentary by associate producer Herbert Coleman, restoration team Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, and Steven Smith (III), author of "A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann" and Vertigo participants • Production notes • Theatrical trailer(s) • "Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece", an original American Movie Classic documentary, narrated by Roddy McDowall and featuring new interviews with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes, Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Patricia Hitchcock, producer Herbert Coleman, restoration team Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, and others involved in the movie's production • Foreign censorship ending • Storyboards, Production drawings, production photographs and advertising materials • Widescreen letterbox format