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Editor’s note: As a twist on the “Marquette Reads” feature, we asked resident movie buff Patrick McGilligan, a lecturer in the Diederich College of Communication, for his top Hitchcock films. McGilligan has taught film, including a course on Hitchcock, at Marquette for 10 years. His Edgar-nominated book Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, was published by HarperCollins in 2003. He recently finished a new biography of film director Nicholas Ray. Photo by Ben Smidt.

Top five Hitchcock films

By Patrick McGilligan

People often ask me what my favorite Hitchcock films are and my standard reply is, “It depends on my mood.” It’s the same way I listen to music: When I am in the mood for the blues, nothing works but the blues. Some Hitchcock films are very bluesy.

1) The Ring. Even as a young man Hitchcock was an accomplished silent film director. The Ring is from 1927. Most people don’t realize that Hitchcock was an avid follower of all sports and knowledgeable about everything from soccer to tennis to boxing. This is one of the best boxing films ever made, as well as a stirring love story.

2) Lifeboat. Hitchcock was fascinated by the challenges of filming in cramped spaces on small budgets. He always wanted to make a film set in a telephone booth. In Lifeboat, from 1944, he put a group of survivors from a torpedoed ship aboard a lifeboat helmed by a Nazi. The result was one of his most unusual films, topical but also timeless.

3) Rear Window. The series of pictures Hitchcock made starting in the early 1950s, at the height of his creative and producing powers, is unrivaled for its scope and quality. The run begins with Strangers on a Train and ends with The Birds, but for most people the romantic and suspenseful apogee is Rear Window, with James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

4) North by Northwest. No less romantic or suspenseful than Rear Window, North by Northwest, from 1959, is more surreal and self-kidding. My secret favorite Hitchcock film may be this one, where Cary Grant is attacked by a crop-duster in a cornfield and Eva Marie Saint is rescued on Mount Rushmore, all in the context of McCarthy Era allusions.

5) Psycho. Who would dare leave Psycho off a Hitchcock list? Hitchcock had a lifelong obsession with serial killers (he grew up near Jack the Ripper), and perhaps Frenzy (his penultimate film) is closer to the reality. But Psycho, with its Wisconsin roots and macabre sense of humor, was the most wildly successful and continues to have a ripple effect on culture.