Good evening. Please watch the following very, very carefully...

May 27, 2015 2:44 PM

Every Alfred Hitchcock cameo ever in his own films.
posted by jim in austin (18 comments total)

Not really a comment invoking post but it does seem his insertion becomes more and more overt as it apparently becomes more expected by the public.
posted by jim in austin at 3:34 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very fun. I have seen many of these movies many times without spotting him. I think my favorite is him posing as the "before" profile in the "Reducto" ad in the Lifeboat newspaper.
posted by bearwife at 3:49 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

My favorite Hitchcock cameo is actually this easter egg from Psycho II, which was made three years after his death.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:59 PM on May 27, 2015 [8 favorites]

It's things like this that help with the 'Hmmm not seen this Hitchcock / not seen it for years... *spend first 15mins of films looking in corners of screen for The Master*' problem

I remember watching To Catch A Thief years ago on tv. It was back in the days of pan and scan you just saw his, still recognizable, ear. I thought it was old Hitch being deliberately obtuse until I eventually saw a wide screen version.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:48 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was gonna be that guy who claims that Hitchcock made two cameos in 'Lifeboat', also playing a bloated floating corpse, but I'm wrong, he used a double for that one.

'Lifeboat' is one of my favorites of his films, and Tallulah Bankhead does a really swell performance in it.
posted by ovvl at 5:09 PM on May 27, 2015

I've been just burning through Alfred Hitchcock Presents on Netflix. What a great damn show!
posted by lkc at 6:11 PM on May 27, 2015

Very fun. I have seen many of these movies many times without spotting him. I think my favorite is him posing as the "before" profile in the "Reducto" ad in the Lifeboat newspaper.


In fact, Hitch is both the before and after pics. He had made an effort to lose weight at the time and was showing off.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:27 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

The man playing the piano during Alfred Hitchcock's cameo in Rear Window is Ross Bagdasarian, aka "David Seville" from Alvin & the Chipmunks.
posted by jonp72 at 8:25 PM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

One thing I've always admired about Hitchock: his movies had superb titles. This was a man who understood what his movies were about and could get them right down into an idea that stuck in your ear: Shadow of a Doubt. Vertigo. The Lady Vanishes. Rear Window. Spellbound. On and on, almost all clear and perfect.

Also, more to the point of this compilation, he understood that his appearance was comic relief, and a little ominous at the same time.
posted by argybarg at 10:28 PM on May 27, 2015

I like how he progresses from carrying a violin case to a cello case to a double bass case over three films interspersed with others (and then a trumpet case).
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:57 AM on May 28, 2015

I thought I had seen most or all of Hitchcock's films from the late 30s onward at least once but I don't remember a thing about Stage Fright.
posted by Eyebeams at 5:18 AM on May 28, 2015

Dont feel bad. I have seen Stage Fright from start to finish at least twice and my memory of it is "the one with Marlene Dietrich and...uh...Jane Wyman maybe" (Google tells me I'm right.)

It's not at all a bad movie, just weirdly forgettable to me too.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:19 AM on May 28, 2015

Argybarg's point about the names is on point: if you want the exemplar of auteur, Hitchcock is it. It starts with getting the movie title just right - a good trick to pull off just once, but to do it consistently is a hallmark of genius. And you go through the movies ticking off hallmark after hallmark, including the cameos, of moments of cinematic artistry that transcend the gimmick. More often than not, the films aren't so much created as composed.
posted by Devonian at 6:50 AM on May 28, 2015

Ironically, this was the item in my RSS feed immediately following this mefi post...
Not perfect, but still!
posted by Theta States at 7:03 AM on May 28, 2015

Seeing them in order like this made me realize that his cameo in North by Northwest -- in which he misses a bus -- is probably a parody of his earlier cameos in which he's often riding the same public transportation the protagonists.
posted by Gelatin at 7:21 AM on May 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some of those early cameos are so vague and unrecognizable, you wonder if they were really intentional cameos, or if, while shooting, he decided he wanted a passerby in a scene and just jumped-in and did it himself.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:46 AM on May 28, 2015

Surprised no one has yet mentioned that in the "Torn Curtain" cameo, the incidental music slyly plays the theme from the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV show.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:51 AM on May 28, 2015

In Hitchcock, the book-length interview by Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock reveals his appearances’ origins were pragmatic rather than vain:

Francois Truffaut: Did you do it [the director’s first cameo in his fifth film, The Lodger] as a gag? Was it superstition? Or was it simply that there weren’t enough extras?

Alfred Hitchcock: It was strictly utilitarian; we had to fill the screen. Later on it became a superstition and eventually a gag. But by now it’s a rather troublesome gag, and I’m very careful to show up in the first five minutes so as to let the people look at the rest of the movie with no further distraction.

Via AV Club
posted by kirkaracha at 7:01 PM on May 28, 2015 [2 favorites]