Celebrating The Master of Suspense…
Yes, there’s a chill in the air, and not just because we’re heading into November! But, rather because we’re celebrating the extraordinary Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, with a November Book Giveaway! Thanks to Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, CMH will be giving away ten copies of Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life by acclaimed biographer Peter Ackroyd via TWITTER (plus two more copies via Facebook and this Blog, details to follow on Wednesday). That’s TWELVE COPIES in all.
To enter, just complete the below entry task by Saturday, December 3rd at 9PM EST. And, fyi, the sooner you enter, the better chance you have of winning, because we will pick two winners on five different days within the contest period, via random drawings, as listed below… So if you don’t win the first week that you enter, you will still be eligible to win during the following weeks until the contest is over.
- Saturday, November 5: Two Winners
- Saturday, November 12: Two Winners
- Saturday, November 19: Two Winners
- Saturday, November 26: Two Winners
- Saturday, December 3: Two Winners
And, yes, you can still enter if you don’t have a Twitter account…
We will announce each week’s winner(s) on Twitter @ClassicMovieHub, the day after each winner is picked at 9PM EST — for example, we will announce our first week’s winners on Sunday December 4 at 9PM EST on Twitter.
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TO ENTER: Complete the following (2-parts) by Saturday, December 3 at 9PM EST…
1) Answer this question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog post: What is one of your all-time favorite suspenseful scenes from a Hitchcock film?
2) Then TWEET (not DM) the following message*:
Just entered to win the “Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life” #BookGiveaway courtesy of @DoubleDayBooks and @ClassicMovieHub
*If you do not have a Twitter account, you can still enter the contest by simply answering the above question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog — BUT PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU ADD THIS VERBIAGE TO YOUR ANSWER: I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
NOTE: if for any reason you encounter a problem commenting here on this blog, please feel free to tweet or DM us, or send an email to classicmoviehub@gmail.com and we will be happy to create the entry for you.
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About the Book: Alfred Hitchcock was a strange child. Fat, lonely, burning with fear and ambition, his childhood was an isolated one, scented with fish from his father’s shop. Afraid to leave his bedroom, he would plan great voyages, using railway timetables to plot an exact imaginary route across Europe. So how did this fearful figure become the one of the most respected film directors of the twentieth century? As an adult, Hitch rigorously controlled the press’s portrait of him, drawing certain carefully selected childhood anecdotes into full focus and blurring all others out. In this quick-witted portrait, Ackroyd reveals something more: a lugubriously jolly man fond of practical jokes, who smashes a once-used tea cup every morning to remind himself of the frailty of life. Iconic film stars make cameo appearances, just as Hitch did in his own films: Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and James Stewart despair of his detached directing style and, perhaps most famously of all, Tippi Hedren endures cuts and bruises from a real-life fearsome flock of birds. Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life wrests the director’s chair back from the master of control and discovers what lurks just out of sight, in the corner of the shot.
About the Author: Peter Ackroyd is the award-winning author of London: The Biography, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Shakespeare: The Biography, and Thames: The Biography. He has written acclaimed biographies of T. S. Eliot, Dickens, Blake, and Sir Thomas More, as well as several successful novels.
Click here for the full contest rules.
Please note that only Continental United States (excluding Alaska, Hawaii, and the territory of Puerto Rico) entrants are eligible.
And — BlogHub members ARE eligible to win if they live within the Continental United States (as noted above).
And if you can’t wait to win the book, you can purchase it on amazon via the below link (click on image):
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–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub
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Definately the carosel scene from Strangers on a Train.
When “Mother Bates” spins around in the chair in the basement – freaked me out as a kid upon first viewing, always unsettling since.
When Vera Miles spins MRS.Bates corpse around in the chair in basement in of PSYCHO!!
One of my all time favorite Alfred Hitchcock suspense moments was from his first all-sound film “Blackmail” (1929). Alice White (Anny Ondra) had just killed a man who tried to rape her with a bread knife. Sitting at the family dinner table, her mother is talking but all that Alice hears is “Knife” over and over. The camera is looked on her horrified face and all the audience can hear is the word “Knife” to when she finally cracks. Even in his first talkie, Hitchcock mastered the use of sound to where it is a weapon of great suspense.
The most suspenseful Alfred Hitchcock film for me is The Birds
My favorite scene is from Rear Window. Grace Kelly’s character is in Raymond Burr’s house looking for evidence and an anxious looking wheelchair bound James Stewart along with the audience watches with mounting tension as he knows she is soon about to be caught by the killer. A beautifully crafted scene amongst several others from the master of suspense.
When Joseph Cotten is trying to push Teresa Wright off the train in “Shadow of a Doubt” – a terrifying and assaultive scene.
I don’t mean to be a copycat, but it’s definitely a tie between the end of Notorious and the Rear Window scene where Jimmy Stewart is in a panic as Grace Kelly is caught by Raymond Burr. I found that relatable.
For me, the most suspenseful moment in a Hitchcock film is the murder of Gromek in “Torn Curtain”. The entire sequence was shot in real time, and the tension comes from the fact that we feel ourselves being involved in this rather brutal murder. We’re watching helplessly as this character is killed slowly and painfully.
Although the film is one of Hitch’s lesser efforts, but it deserves some credit of mounting suspense using very little.
The wine cellar scene in Notorious. Scenes where you know someone is coming stress me out. Also that film was the first contest I won, and I’ll give you one guess where.
haha LOVE it 🙂
I saw this book at B&N today, opened it to a random page and read a paragraph or two about Hitchcock hiring Raymond Chandler to write the screenplay for Strangers On A Train. Really good read, I had to put it down but I don’t want to. This is one to buy if you don’t win.
Alfred Hitchcock!! Gosh favorite suspenseful scene? I’ll go with Rear Window. That movie put me on edge, and was well done! Hitchcock is a hero of mine. I love his show also! And that story Mel Brooks tells about him is hilarious!
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For me, the it’s the fight scene on Mt Rushmore at the end of North By Northwest.
The scene from ‘The Birds’ where Tipi Hedren turns around and sees an enormous flock of ravens sitting quietly behind her on the playground climbing frame.
My favorite Hitch scene is from “Suspicion” When Cary’s walking upstairs with a glass of milk for Joan, who thinks Cary’s going to murder her for the life insurance money.
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I thought the shower scene in Psycho was the most suspenseful scene in any movie ever made. You sit there not knowing that Janet Lee is about to be butchered by Norman’s Mom. LOL Hitchcock really was one of a kind.
In Vertigo when the Jimmy Stewart character discovers the woman who looks just like his lost love.
The entire portion of North by Northwest when Roger Thornhill is on the run.
From the movie Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers is trying to convince the young Mrs. de Winter to jump out the window of Rebecca’s room in the east wing of Manderly.
Oh yes, that’s a good scene! Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
It has to be the scene from the film “Rebecca”, when Mrs. Danvers stands behind Mrs. deWinter, whispering in her ear, “Why don’t you? Go on.” The close up shot of Mrs. deWinter’s tear stained face and Mrs. Danver’s cool expression, as if she is just a voice on her shoulder suggesting her to jump, is a stark image coupled with the hypnotic musical score. Then the moment is broken by the shouts from the party below, and Mrs. deWinter dashes out of Rebecca’s room shouting, “Maxim!”
We’re not even given a moment’s pause to exhale in relief because Hitchcock immediately takes us from one suspenseful moment to the next, where we learn from Maxim what truly happened in the past. All of it is so beautifully fluid.
The scene at the end of The Man Who One Too Much in the Albert Hall – either version.
I absolutely love the end of Rear Window, when he’s coming up the stairs and the light under the door goes out I get goosebumps every time.
Actually, when, in Rear Window, Grace Kelly’s Lisa slides the note under Thorwald’s door, and has to quietly rush down the hall, then goes to the back of the building and just squeaks away as Thorwald searches out the window above her. You can almost feel his breath on her or your own neck the whole time!
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Entering on behalf of Queen Bee: ‘shegoesupstairs~The Birds
My favorite scene has to be the shower scene in Psycho. My second favorite is the Mt. Rushmore fight scene at the end of North by Northwest.
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The scene in Suspicion when Cary is walking up the stairs with the glass of milk. The way the camera hones in on the glass, you hope it doesn’t mean he really going to poison her.
Favorite scene is at the end of Notorious – will Cary and Ingrid get out and get away or will they be stopped and what happens to Ingrid’s husband – he’s dead meat!!!lol
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That’s one of my favorite Hitch films… Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
Hi Rachel, I am happy to say that you are one of our winners! Congratulations! I just sent you an email; if you don’t receive it, please let me know. Thanks!
My favorite scene is from Notorious. Ingrid Bergman has the key in her hand and needs to put it back on the key ring. Claude Rains stops her. You all know the scene. Kissing one hand, reaching for the other one, the embrace, the key dropped on the floor and kicked away to be added to the key chain later.
The tension gets me every time.
Love this film.
The merry-go-round scene at the end of Strangers On A Train is classic Hitchcock! Pure cinema at it’s best!
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They are all full of suspense, but The Birds scene where Tippi Hedren is upstairs and gets trapped is terrifying. I’ve worked with birds for several years and they can be VERY aggressive and do severe damage.
I always thought the climactic scene in Young and Innocent, identifying the killer in a crowded ballroom by use of a crane shot was an amazing bit of camera work and way to create drama, especially for the era.
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1954 was especially a good year for Alfred Hitchcock movies with “Read Window” & “Dial M for Murder”. They both star Grace Kelly. My favorite scenes in “M” are her fighting for her life & killing her attacker & Inspector’s set up of the latchkey discovery, seeing if he took the bait, & oh he did indeed. I really loved Ray Milland in this movie. He’s such a gentleman villain, even serving everyone, except the Inspector, because he was “still on duty”, including his intended victim, drinks. Might as well have one before all of the fun is ended. Hitchcock is my favorite mystery movie producer/director, because he doesn’t have to show gore, to scare all of us into stunned silence. The psychological warfare in his movies are what keeps me going back & watching them over and over.
Adore Dial M for Murder… I always find myself saying out loud — look in the pocketbook!!! And I saw Rear Window on the Big Screen a few years ago and appreciated it even more than I had before. Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
Oh man when Grace Kelly is looking for evidence of the murder in Raymond Burr’s apartment. Jimmy Stewart is sitting helpless, sweating bullets in his wheelchair. Rear Window is great!
I particularly like the flavor of the suspense in Notorious. This film was written *during* the war. No one knew jack about the Manhattan project or practical atomic bombs. So the McGuffin is particularly sexy.
The suspense in this film builds in a protracted, sustained way. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) has to pretend to love a man she doesn’t (Claude Rains) and not get caught. Report back to a man she does love: her spymaster “Dev” Devlin (Cray Grant), without being found out.
At Devlin’s behest, she must convince her new husband to a) throw a party to which she b) must be sure to invite the man her husband is jealous of and c) steal a key from her under husband’s nose without being discovered.
With the tension hovering somewhere between gunpowder and unstable nitroglycerine, Hitch lights the fuse with a pleasant pan from the top of the grand stairs over the glamorous party and gracefully eagle-eye zooms down to charming hostess Alicia … with the wine cellar key in hand!
The suspense advances with her passing the key to Devlin under the watchful stare of her suspicious husband. A countdown ticks on the diminishing champagne. Trays of brimming glasses. A rendezvous set.
Time is short. Pacing at a door. A stabbed cigarette. A furtive entrance; a backward glance; a dim search; murky evidence. Upstairs the clave claps out a nervous beat as champagne runs into glasses as sand through an hour glass. An inventory page lifts. An elbow turns. A bottle crashes!
The clean-up rushed. The light doused. The staircase. A shadow… and the tension resolves with a burning kiss in a doorway. Begin Act 3.
The part in Rear Window when Lisa Fremont gets caught in Thorwald’s apartment and he sees the ring she is showing to Jeffries and Thorwald sees Jeffries knows he killed his wife.
In North by Northwest when cary grant’s character is in the elevator with all those guys who want to assassinate him and his mom asks them if they really want to hurt her son.
Shadown of a doubt when we see female Charlie find the newspaper article that proves to her he is the merry Widow Murderer, and he knows she knows.
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My favorite Alfred Hitchcock scene would have to be the ending of Psycho when Vera Miles and John Gavin are going through the house trying to figure it all out. Psycho is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time and the ending scenes of that movie just have me sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time no matter how many times I have seen it! – I do not have a twitter so I am posting my answer here!
Oh yes. Good one! Always on the edge of my seat for any Hitchcock! Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
The ending of Rear Window…I don’t want to spoil it (though I imagine everyone’s seen it) but it’s one of those scenes that actually has you on the edge of your seat as opposed to only figuratively.
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Great movie. Saw it on the Big Screen a few years ago and enjoyed it even more. Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
I, too, thought that the most suspenseful scene in one of Hitchcock’s films has to be when Jimmy Stewart is helplessly watching Grace Kelly enter the apartment across the way of Raymond Burr. It’s so spine-tingling and keeps you absolutely on the edge of your seat. You can feel his nervousness and anticipation with every bead of sweat, and wrenching in his wheelchair. Priceless!
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Absolutely! I was on the edge of my seat too!!! Thanks for entering and Good Luck 🙂
Strangers on a Train. The carousel. The third act. OMG.
My all time favorite suspense scene in a Hitchcock film would have to be the scene in “The Birds” when the birds attack again at the gas station and the attendant drops the spewing hose of gasoline. It spreads quickly and silently across the pavement and we slowly realize is danger with our protagonist. This was my first Hitchcock movie I was shown by my father and this scene has stuck with me asnI remebrr yelling at the television screen as the characters in the movie were as the man lit his cigar with certain death waiting right under his feet! A very personal connection to this scene that has stayed with me and even influenced me as I work as a young filmmmaker.
One of my favorite all-time suspenseful scenes from a Hitchcock film is in Psycho (the scene where Norman is trying to get rid of Marion Crane’s car in the swamp). It was funny and tense as it took a while for it to go down (for a second it looked like it might not go down).
My favourite scene is the one in The Birds when Tippi Hendren sits outside the school and the birds start massing on the climbing frame behind her. Very quiet scene, no dialogue just sound of children singing in the background completely unaware of the attack that is to follow. Genius
The hat, the spread of food on top of the box, the glass cracking in the hand, the murderer’s creepy smug smile, the slow crawl until Jimmy Stewart resolves it…everything “Rope.”
These scenes are evenly tied with:
The window scene while being “encouraged” to jump, the costume party dress and the broken ceramic discovered in “Rebecca.”
All the movies mentioned above and in Hitchcock’s body of work make this such an incredibly difficult choice!!
The scene in Psycho where they show Mrs. Bates’ corpse
my favorite scene from Alfred Hitchcock is in Psycho, absolutely brilliant.
The Man Who Knew Too Much: you know when the assassination is going to happen at the symphony..and so does Doris Day. I stop breathing every time.
There’s just so many! I think I’ll go with the jacket-in-the-windmill scene in Foreign Correspondent. I remember the first time I caught a glimpse of that scene. I had just turned on the TV and saw what was happening. I had to change the channel because I just knew the old man was going to give him up! I was embarrassed to discover that being such a Hitchcock fan, I had not recognized this as one of his and had actually never seen it, then I totoally missed it. When I found it airing again, I watched that scene a second time and I discovered that I was holding my breath during that entire sequence.
I think the most suspenseful scenes in any Hitchcock film is when Grace Kelly’s character “Lisa Carol” in “Rear Window” enters Thorwald’s apartment, and Thorwald himself then enters the apartment. The suspense in that scene where Kelly’s character is on the verge on being caught is full of suspense. And, of course, the climatic ending where Thorwald enters Jimmy Stewart’s character’s apartment. Mention should also be made of the Albert Hall sequence in “The Man Who Knew too Much”, where music, as always, adds great suspense.
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Camera silently tracking back down stairs from the covent garden flat in Frenzy.