The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
#1
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The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
With the apparently extensive slate of upcoming Hitchcock titles, I figured The Master deserved his own thread. Please post all future news, reviews, and speculation on Hitchcock releases here.
From Blu-ray.com--
![](http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd114/besh1/tcat_blu.jpg)
Already announced, from MGM on 1/24:
Rebecca (1940)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
No official confirmation on specs/cover art yet, but presumably the extras from the DVD versions will be ported over.
Rebecca:
Spellbound:
Notorious:
Blu-ray.com has 2012 TBA listings up for Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954), with US announcements presumably to follow.
The British Film Institute has been working on restorations of Hitchcock's nine surviving silent films for several years, with theatrical screenings next year of first The Lodger and The Pleasure Garden, then a full retrospective. Presumably Blu-rays will follow. Read more here.
Pre-existing threads:
Psycho
North by Northwest
There is also an apparently lousy looking RB release of The 39 Steps, reviewed here. For completionist's sake, here's a review of Criterion's The Lady Vanishes Blu-ray. Note: Apparently Peter Bogdonovich's commentary from an earlier DVD release of To Catch a Thief has been dropped. Criterion still owns the rights to The 39 Steps, and may have acquired The Foreign Correspondent once WB lost the rights. I guess that's it for now, please let me know if I missed anything.
From Blu-ray.com--
![](http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd114/besh1/tcat_blu.jpg)
Paramount Home Entertainment has officially announced that it will release on Blu-ray Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller To Catch a Thief (1955), starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Winner of Oscar Award for Best Cinematography (Robert Burks, North By Northwest, The Birds), To Catch A Thief will be available for purchase on March 6th.
Special Features:
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper, Hitchcock Film Historian
A Night with the Hitchcocks
Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America
Writing and Casting To Catch A Thief
The Making of To Catch A Thief
Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly
Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch A Thief: An Appreciation
Edith Head: The Paramount Years
If You Love To Catch A Thief, You'll Love this Interactive Travelogue
Theatrical Trailer
Galleries:
- Movie
- Publicity
- Visitors to the Set
- Production
Special Features:
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper, Hitchcock Film Historian
A Night with the Hitchcocks
Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America
Writing and Casting To Catch A Thief
The Making of To Catch A Thief
Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly
Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch A Thief: An Appreciation
Edith Head: The Paramount Years
If You Love To Catch A Thief, You'll Love this Interactive Travelogue
Theatrical Trailer
Galleries:
- Movie
- Publicity
- Visitors to the Set
- Production
Rebecca (1940)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
No official confirmation on specs/cover art yet, but presumably the extras from the DVD versions will be ported over.
Rebecca:
• Commentary with critic Richard Schickel
• Isolated music and effects track
• Rare screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests including Margaret Sullavan, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine (9:11)
• The Making of Rebecca featurette (28:05)
• The Gothic World of Daphne du Maurier featurette (19:01)
• 3 X 1 hour Radio Plays
• Hitchcock on Rebecca: excerpts from the director's conversations with filmmaker Francois Truffaut (9:19) and Peter Bogdanovich (4:26)
• Trailer
• Stills Gallery (Posters, Portraits, Behind the Scenes)
• Isolated music and effects track
• Rare screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests including Margaret Sullavan, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine (9:11)
• The Making of Rebecca featurette (28:05)
• The Gothic World of Daphne du Maurier featurette (19:01)
• 3 X 1 hour Radio Plays
• Hitchcock on Rebecca: excerpts from the director's conversations with filmmaker Francois Truffaut (9:19) and Peter Bogdanovich (4:26)
• Trailer
• Stills Gallery (Posters, Portraits, Behind the Scenes)
• Commentary with film historians Thomas Schatz & Charles Ramirez Berg
• Guilt by Association: Psychoanalyzing Spellbound featurette
• A Cinderella Story: Rhonda Fleming featurette
• Dreaming with Scissors: Hitchcock, Surrealism and Salvador Dali featurette
• 1948 radio play directed by Alfred Hitchcock
• Audio interview: Peter Bogdanovich interviews Hitchcock
• Still gallery
• Guilt by Association: Psychoanalyzing Spellbound featurette
• A Cinderella Story: Rhonda Fleming featurette
• Dreaming with Scissors: Hitchcock, Surrealism and Salvador Dali featurette
• 1948 radio play directed by Alfred Hitchcock
• Audio interview: Peter Bogdanovich interviews Hitchcock
• Still gallery
• Commentary by Rick Jewell
• Commentary by Drew Casper
• Theatrical trailer
• Isolated Music track
• The Ultimate Romance: the Making of Notorious (28:20)
• Alfred Hitchcock The Ultimate Spymaster (13:09)
• The American Film Institute Award: The Key to Hitchcock (3:19)
• Complete broadcast of the 1948 Lux Radio Theater adaptation, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten
• Hitchcock Interviews - excerpts from the director's conversations with filmmaker Francois Truffaut (16:22) and Peter Bogdanovich (2:19)
• Restoration Comparison (2:54)
• Trailer
• Stills Gallery (Posters, Portraits, Behind the Scenes)
• Commentary by Drew Casper
• Theatrical trailer
• Isolated Music track
• The Ultimate Romance: the Making of Notorious (28:20)
• Alfred Hitchcock The Ultimate Spymaster (13:09)
• The American Film Institute Award: The Key to Hitchcock (3:19)
• Complete broadcast of the 1948 Lux Radio Theater adaptation, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten
• Hitchcock Interviews - excerpts from the director's conversations with filmmaker Francois Truffaut (16:22) and Peter Bogdanovich (2:19)
• Restoration Comparison (2:54)
• Trailer
• Stills Gallery (Posters, Portraits, Behind the Scenes)
The British Film Institute has been working on restorations of Hitchcock's nine surviving silent films for several years, with theatrical screenings next year of first The Lodger and The Pleasure Garden, then a full retrospective. Presumably Blu-rays will follow. Read more here.
Pre-existing threads:
Psycho
North by Northwest
There is also an apparently lousy looking RB release of The 39 Steps, reviewed here. For completionist's sake, here's a review of Criterion's The Lady Vanishes Blu-ray. Note: Apparently Peter Bogdonovich's commentary from an earlier DVD release of To Catch a Thief has been dropped. Criterion still owns the rights to The 39 Steps, and may have acquired The Foreign Correspondent once WB lost the rights. I guess that's it for now, please let me know if I missed anything.
Last edited by NoirFan; 12-20-11 at 08:52 AM.
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
Finally! It's nuts that To Catch a Thief has gotten two DVD releases in the high-def era without an accompanying HD release. Such a pretty, pretty confection of a movie. I'm thrilled to finally see Grace Kelly represented on Blu-ray as well. (Five and a half years, and the most we've gotten until now are the excerpts featured in the That's Entertainment! set and a bit of To Catch a Thief on that goofy Monte Carlo teen flick.) As someone who's had the misfortune of listening to it, the dropped commentary from one of the earlier DVDs won't be missed. I obviously can't wait for those three MGM releases either.
Yeah, I imported The 39 Steps, and it's no great shakes.
Yeah, I imported The 39 Steps, and it's no great shakes.
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
New to this special collector's edition of To Catch a Thief is an audio commentary with Peter Bogdanovich, a former film critic and a director in his own right, who's joined by author and documentarian Laurent Bouzereau. Like the movie itself, the commentary is light and breezy. Bogdanovich's comments are of most interest when he touches on To Catch a Thief from a director's perspective as well as reflecting on his meetings with Hitchcock on the sets of Topaz, The Birds, and Torn Curtain and sharing such personal touches as the tearing up of Cary Grant's eyes when he laughed. His remaining comments are otherwise fairly routine for anyone who's done any reading on Hitchcock; skim through Hitchcock's Wikipedia entry and read through Truffaut's extensive interview with the director, and little of this will be revelatory. Bouzereau acts more as a moderator than a speaker, trying to stave off gaps in the discussion, but the two of them have so little to say about To Catch a Thief in particular that they veer into such side conversations as the first Hitchcock movies they'd seen. There are enough interesting notes to make this commentary worth a listen, though, such as how this was a rare whodunnit? for Hitchcock, the director's work in the silent movie era shaping his later work as a filmmaker, contrasting the more overt sexuality of the films of the '30s with the repressed '50s, and likening To Catch a Thief with other of his works, particularly Rear Window, Notorious, Marnie, and The Birds. Pleasant enough, if not an essential listen.
#6
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
Thanks. As far as Casper goes, he can be very insightful, but is a bit of a drama queen - his stagey vocal histrionics do drag over the course of an entire commentary. That Edith Head doc must be on every single Paramount disc.
#7
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
Great thread, thanks NoirFan! I almost missed the release of The Lady Vanishes because of not keeping up with the Criterion thread. Great news about To Catch a Thief. I'm also very interested in seeing how the silent era restorations turn out. I am keeping my fingers crossed we get a Blu release over here, especially of The Lodger and the 2 yet unavailable titles in the US (Pleasure Garden and Downhill).
My preorders are in and the wait is on!
My preorders are in and the wait is on!
![Smilie](/images/smilies/smile.gif)
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
I hope that box isn't true, but it wouldn't be unprecedented...like Fox/MGM putting the previously released Fargo in their Coens box while leaving Barton Fink on the shelf.
The biggest reason I'm suspicious about that list of 3 titles is that a lot of the Hitchcocks that Universal has the rights to aren't exactly fan favorites. Something like Topaz or Family Plot would be a tough sell on their own, but put them in a boxed set and everyone'll kinda be forced to buy 'em. (Plus being selfish, I want Rear Window sooner rather than later!)
The biggest reason I'm suspicious about that list of 3 titles is that a lot of the Hitchcocks that Universal has the rights to aren't exactly fan favorites. Something like Topaz or Family Plot would be a tough sell on their own, but put them in a boxed set and everyone'll kinda be forced to buy 'em. (Plus being selfish, I want Rear Window sooner rather than later!)
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
Blu-ray.com has 2012 TBA listings up for Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954), with US announcements presumably to follow.
#11
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
There will also apparently be a WB box set, presumably containing Train, Dial (in 3-D?), North by Northwest and (hopefully) others. Stage Fright and the previously mentioned Foreign Correspondent are both OOP, which leaves Suspicion, The Wrong Man, I Confess and Mr. and Mrs. Smith from the Hitchcock Signature Collection. A 7-film Blu-ray box of catalog titles sounds extremely unlikely, but one can dream. I wouldn't lose any sleep if they didn't include Smith though.
I would love to see Dial M for Murder in 3D. I've always heard Hitchcock did some interesting things with it, but I have never seen it in 3D. It would be really cool to see a lot of the vintage 3D films get releases. I know I'm dreaming, but it would still be cool. I would think Dial M would be the most likely old film to have the 3D version included.
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
^
House of Wax (1953) in 3D has a listing up on Amazon UK, but no release date yet.
House of Wax (1953) in 3D has a listing up on Amazon UK, but no release date yet.
![LOL](/images/smilies/lol.gif)
#16
re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
To Catch a Thief -- not a bad film, but definitely one of those films where all the actors are on vacation. Hopefully, more Hitchcock gets added.
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
#20
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
Uh, I guess I can applaud their consistency in the Hitchcock covers ... Yeah, I got nothing. Those are pretty awful looking. I'll buy them anyway, though.
#21
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re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
As will I - usually I wait for catalog titles to hit $9.99 or less, but I've got a big chunk of Amazon credit, so I'll order both once they appear in my Gold Box. I can wait on Spellbound though, as I don't particularly care for it.
#23
re: The Official Alfred Hitchcock on Blu-ray & UHD Thread
That's a shame. I always thought the cover of Criterion's Notorious release was one of the classiest in my collection.
![](http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af161/jackslater4/137_box_348x490.jpg)