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His first piece was "Gas" (1919), published in the first issue, in which a young woman imagines that she is being assaulted one night in Paris only for the twist to reveal that it was all just a hallucination in the dentist's chair, induced by the anesthetic.
Hitchcock's first few films faced a string of bad luck. His first directing project came in 1922 with the aptly titled Number 13.The production was canceled because of financial problems; filmed in London, the few scenes that had been finished at that point have been lost.
Michael Balcon gave Hitchcock another opportunity for a directing credit with The Pleasure Garden, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka, which he made at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich in the summer of 1925; the film was a commercial flop. Next, Hitchcock directed a drama called The Mountain Eagle (possibly released under the title Fear o' God in the United States). This film was eventually lost.
Hitchcock's luck changed with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, a suspense film about the hunt for a Jack the Ripper type of serial killer in London. Released in January 1927, it was a major commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom.
Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success and his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period with the British Film Institute ranking it the fourth best British film of the 20th century.
Hitchcock's films during the 1940s were diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947) to the dark and disturbing film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950),
Strangers on a Train (1951),
I Confess (1953),
Rear Window (1954),
To Catch a Thief (1955),
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956),
The Wrong Man (1957)
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho is almost certainly Hitchcock's best known film. Produced on a constrained budget of $800,000. The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine, the innocent lives extinguished by a disturbed murderer became the defining hallmarks of a new horror movie genre and have been copied by many authors of subsequent films.
The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of theaters as people had to wait for the next showing.
Failing health reduced Hitchcock's output during the last two decades of his career. Biographer Stephen Rebello claimed Universal "forced" two movies on him, Torn Curtain and Topaz. Both were spy thrillers set with Cold War related themes. The first, Torn Curtain (1966), with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, precipitated the bitter end of the twelve year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann was fired when Hitchcock was unsatisfied with his score. Topaz (1969), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both received mixed reviews from critics.
Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film.
Near the end of his life, Hitchcock had worked on the script for a projected spy thriller, The Short Night, collaborating with screenwriters James Costigan and Ernest Lehman. Despite some preliminary work, the story was never filmed. This was caused primarily by Hitchcock's own failing health and his concerns over the health of his wife, Alma, who had suffered a stroke. The script was eventually published posthumously, in a book on Hitchcock's last years.