After the Telegraph's Yang, a little Yin: Great retro on Hitch at Telegraph

Malcolm Keen and Anny Ondra in Hitchcock's The Manxman (1928)

From the Telegraph's collected stills piece: 


You can think you know Hitchcock inside out until you remember how much there is of him. His was a portly career all round, spanning the half–century from British silent cinema's heyday in the Twenties to Family Plot in 1976. His second feature, The Mountain Eagle (1927), is feared lost, and we've excluded his shorts, documentaries, television series and Mary (1931), the German version of Murder!

Otherwise, this is the lot: 52 films. Catching up with his silent and early sound pictures is a fascinating experience, not because all of them are perfectly achieved by any means, but because they're notes towards a style, step–by–step experiments in deciding what "Hitchcockian" should mean.

He learned just as much from his mistakes as his recognised triumphs. In the Hollywood years, there's no single period that's without the odd misstep, but even those reveal facets of his artistry we wouldn't appreciate if we only looked at the classics. As for these, few directors from any era can claim quite so many.

"Genius" is the catchword the British Film Institute has chosen to describe its complete retrospective – an overused plaudit, undoubtedly, but if anyone earned it, Hitch did.



The Genius of Hitchcock, the BFI's complete retrospective of his films, runs at BFI Southbank, London SE1, from August to October. Info:bfi.org.ukPicture: Courtesy Everett Collection / Rex Features