Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Just what I expected

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Dial H for Hitchcock (1999) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Well made documentary covering the entire career of Alfred Hitchcock features interviews with Janet Leigh, Jonathan Demme, Brian De Palma, Curtis Hanson, Wes Craven, Peter Bogdanovich and various others including Hitchcock himself. We really don't learn anything new here but it's always interesting hearing directors speak of their favorite films and there are some nice stories told here. Psycho gets the majority of the talk but I always find these stories the most entertaining since this film does contain the greatest number of shocks. A lot of detail is also given to Hitchcock's relationship with his wife, which was pretty touching. AKA Hitchcock: Shadow of a Genius.

This film was re-monikered DIAL H FOR HITCHCOCK when I saw it recently on cable.We get it all here. Clips from the films. Commentary about his craft. Commentary about the personal impact he had on current film-makers. Personal insights from a few people who'd worked with Hitch. A brief biography blended in with a chronological survey of some of his career highlights. We also get Hitchcock himself; both in serious archival interview as well as entertaining appearances from his trailers and TV show intros. And montages. Glorious beautifully crafted montages. We get it all. Except for that compulsive-monster stuff you can only find in the tabloid-style book THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS.I was very impressed by the montage sequences and how they artfully chose just the right images to blend with what the commentators were saying. It didn't hurt that Bernard Herrmann's score to VERTIGO was used, both for the long opening montage as well as the closing sequence.Commentators included several directors from today ... Wes Craven, Brian DePalma, Jonathan Demme, Robt Altman, Peter Bogdanovich.Would have been nice to get old footage of interviewed commentators from days of old ... folk that Hitchcock had worked with. The only ones left to interview were ... Norman Lloyd (the actor who took the plunge off the Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR and whom collaborated closely on the 50's TV show ... he also had become a very close personal friend with Alfred and Alma)... Janet Leigh, who needs no introduction ... Tippi Hendren, ditto ... Teresa Wright, the nice young lady in SHADOW OF A DOUBT... and Joseph Stefano who wrote the screenplay to PSYCHO.Stefano's comments were very keen as he mused about where the hell such a civilized man as Hitchcock could have found the deep dark places of the human soul within himself to mine. His narration synched-up nicely with the montage, displaying short snippets of various characters in close-up, tortured souls, lonely souls ... as Stefano's comments were handed over to the voice track of Norman Bates: "we're all alone. Trapped like animals. In our own private cages."For Hitchcock aficionados, there might not be anything new to glean here. It covers old territory like explaining "The McGuffin" theory. But it doesn't go much into technical things like his montage-approach to editing ... or the pre-eminence of building a long anxious suspense sequence, compared to a brief sudden shock. (These kinds of things are covered more thoroughly in the 1970's docu series THE MEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES ... but when will we ever get treated to THAT again??) This is still a great retelling of his life and career in a fresh style, and a nice entertaining way to spend 90 minutes. In fact I got sucked into watching part of it a second time. But this (like Hitchcock's own work) is like a rollercoaster -- you can enjoy it over and over.

Some magnificent background on early Hitchcock and marvelous seldom-seen footage gets this well-meaning documentary off on the right track for the first 40 min. The rest is a waste of time with the same old clips being shown as the same old talking heads concur one-at-a-time to what has become accepted wisdom among today's entertainment artist intelligencia. It's a shame that Billy Wilder, Stanley Kramer and other quasi-contemporaries of Hitchcock were not interviewed to provide balance -- Truffaut's adoration of Hitchcock has proven to be both a blessing and a curse because there is now a protected unified front over what Hitchcock "loved" and didn't love. For example, despite Selznicks' "interference", Rebecca is still a picture for the ages, and Suspicion was quite successful at the box office despite revisionist history. The Wrong Man was also ignored totally since it didn't fit into the thesis.

This is a great look into the man known as Hitchcock. There are alot of interviews with alot of the stars who worked with Hitchcock telling all about him, and the movies they were in. There are some appearences by alot of the directors of today saying what they admired of Hitchcock. Hitchcock is the master of suspense, and this is a look into how he worked, who he worked with, where he got some of the ideas for his movies, and a great documentary you shouldn't miss. You also see how "Psycho" shocked some people in a way where they had nightmares for years. A must see, a most definite must see.