WORST

Jamaica Inn is reportedly one of Hitchcock's least favourite films. He wasn't involved in the scripting process. And there was no cameo.

So this movie is not exactly a Hitchcock picture.

Any Hitchcock film that is rarely seen tends to be overlooked and under-rated.

I have (just) seen all Hitchcock's films and though I don't much like thids it is very good film for its time. It's ludicrously melodramatic but look at the cutting - so many shots, quick cutting.

Also people have NO IDEA what Hitchcock thought of his films - or anything else. His interviews with Truffaut are completely misleading. He hardly mentions Fritz Lang and yet there are many echos of Lang in his early films - though Hitchcock overtook Lang in quality.

Hitch says nothing about Easy Virtue and yet it is a very well made minor film which Marnie seems to echo. Hitch spent his life trying to get away from thrillers. He started off with wider interests and had to find ways of making the films he wanted while still superficially thrillers - like Vertigo and The Birds.

Curiously the Birds was probably an idea he had long before Du Maurier's story as it owes a lot to a 1930s novel by Frank Baker called - The Birds!

I love Hitchcock movies. His technique in suspense always tickles me. The scene where Mary is on the roof and looking down through a small space to see some gang members looking up in order to hang the squire slays me.

I found that his best work resulted under the push and pull relationship he had with producer David O Selznick.


Smoke me a kipper. I’ll be back for breakfast