Throughout his extensive career in the film industry, Alfred Hitchcock worked as a writer, producer, actor, editor, and crew member, but most importantly, he was a director. He had a terrific eye for filmmaking that he employed while directing over 50 movies. Hitchcock is best remembered for films like Psycho, Rear Window, The Birds, North by Northwest, and Vertigo, but he had plenty of successful, artistically fantastic movies before that fruitful period of the 1950s and early ‘60s.

He started working in film in 1920 at the Famous Players-Lasky Company designing title cards for silent movies and as an assistant director. His career as a director began in 1925. The silent film, The Pleasure Garden is a romantic drama following two couples on the paths of long distance relationships with some dark, surprising twists. Though it was the first movie he directed, it was the third to be released. The first Hitchcock directed release was The Lodger, a story about the London fog, based on the thriller novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes. The success of The Lodger prompted the film studio he was working with to release The Pleasure Garden and The Mountain Eagle. The Lodger was his first foray into thrillers, a subgenre he returned to in 1929 with Blackmail, his first talkie.

He began steadily making thrillers in 1934 with The Man Who Knew Too Much. Beginning to hone his skills, he established the pattern of deconstructing familial relationships in a story of suspense. One of his most celebrated British films is The 39 Steps, a chase thriller based on the novel by John Buchan about a man in London who tries to help a counterespionage agent, but ends up on the run trying to save himself and stop spies from stealing critical information. His last British film was Jamaica Inn based on the novel by Daphne Du Maurier about a young woman who learns that she’s living near a gang of criminals who cause shipwrecks for money. He directed several successful silent films and early talkies in England prior to going to Hollywood in 1939.

Many of his movies have reputations for their violence and complex psychological storylines. Rebecca, based on another celebrated novel by Du Maurier, tells the story of a young bride tormented by the maid who is obsessed with the husband’s first wife. This was his first U.S. film and it earned an Oscar for Best Picture. His 1941 film Suspicion, about a woman who suspects her husband of being a murderer planning to make her his next victim, explores the foray of evil within a family. But, his movies show evil not just in physical violence but also through systemic and institutional torture. This was seen in Notorious in 1946 the bizarre love story that has an FBI agent put the woman he loves in the dangerous arms of a Nazi to learn about a spy ring.