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Go here for a homage (dunno when this effect will expire … I suspect at midnight EDT, about 7 hours from now). Today, Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of them all (well, my favorite anyway), would be 104. It would be impossible to overstate how much I love his movies and what an effect they had on me as a young adult.

• VERTIGO, a masterpiece, is only my third-favorite of his films (behind REAR WINDOW and PSYCHO);
• He taught me that art and works that stand up to scholarly criticism can be thoroughly enjoyable and that a vulgar movie can depict the deepest religious thoughts and feelings;
• One of the events that made me a cinephile was a week-long Hitchcock festival on one of the cable superstations (WGN in Chicago, I think) that showed DIAL M FOR MURDER (my first Hitch, and I still treasure it like a first love) REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956), PSYCHO and TORN CURTAIN;
• Just last year, I saw two of his earliest, less well-known films for the first time each, BLACKMAIL and THE RING, and it was like finding another well in the desert given the usual diminishing returns as you work your way through your favorite directors’ bodies of work. Even his weakest films have some merit and some of his less-canonized works are absolute gems that most directors would be proud to call his best (BLACKMAIL, SABOTAGE, FRENZY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT);
• Hitchcocks still to see — UNDER CAPRICORN, WALTZES FROM VIENNA, JAMAICA INN, MURDER, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, RICH AND STRANGE, SECRET AGENT.