Just as Sergio Leone did more than only Westerns (Once Upon a Time in America) and Akira Kurosawa did more than samurai movies (High and Low, Ikiru, and The Bad Sleep Well), so too was Alfred Hitchcock more than just the master of suspense. Like with Leone and Westerns, and Kurosawa and samurai movies, Hitchcock might be most well-remembered for his thrillers, but he was versatile behind the camera. Plenty of his movies had darkly comedic elements, for example, but he was also the director of a surprisingly large number of outright comedies (some not great, sure, but The Lady Vanishes and The Trouble with Harry are both quite good).
And romance was another genre Hitchcock scarcely shied away from exploring, with many of his thriller/adventure/mystery movies also containing enough by way of romantic stuff to qualify, at least in part, as romance films. The following are the best of the best romance (or at least part-romance) films Alfred Hitchcock directed in a long career. And “romance” is being defined fairly broadly here. If the movie stars a man and a woman, and they’re at least somewhat flirtatious and/or interested in each other throughout, it’s a romantic film. Granted, some of these explore the darker side of romance, and some belong to other genres more prominently, but there’s enough by way of romance in all for them to qualify here.
5
‘Rebecca’ (1940)
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
It’s almost surprising, considering Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy, but the man only ever directed one movie that won Best Picture, and it came out quite a while before he truly hit his stride as a filmmaker (the mid-1940s to the early 1960s was probably when he was at his best, though some might disagree). But that one Best Picture winner was an admittedly good film: Rebecca, which works as a romance film of sorts, even though it’s also very much a thriller and something that has a good deal of mystery attached to its central premise.
Rebecca is a film that gets pretty dark in places, though it’s not quite as harrowing as some of Hitchcock’s later (and even more widely-celebrated) films.
At its core, Rebecca revolves around a young woman marrying a mysterious widower, and eventually learning some alarming things about the woman he used to be married to: the titular Rebecca. It’s a film that gets pretty dark in places, though it’s not quite as harrowing as some of Hitchcock’s later (and even more widely-celebrated) films, like Psycho, for instance. Still, Rebecca is pretty great for a psychological thriller of its age, certainly having a patient sense of pacing, but nonetheless being engrossing and undeniably atmospheric. Also, the performances at its center are great, given it stars some legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.
Rebecca
- Release Date
-
March 23, 1940
- Runtime
-
121 minutes
4
‘Spellbound’ (1945)
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll
Spellbound is undeniably one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies, generally speaking, so it stands to reason that it’s also one of his greatest that has a strong element of romance to it. It focuses on a man (Gregory Peck) whose mind is unraveling, thanks to amnesia, and he has a continual fear that he might’ve murdered someone without being able to remember it. He wants to try and get to the bottom of things, and hopefully prove his innocence in the process, getting the help of a psychoanalyst (played by Ingrid Bergman) to undertake such a task.
Throughout Spellbound, the two also start to fall for each other, but that adds a good deal to the dread and suspense inherent to the story at hand, given Peck’s character may well be capable of doing terrible things. And so things alternate between being stirring, entertaining, and suspenseful, all balanced in a way that you typically see when Hitchcock is in complete control of the film he’s directing. It all holds up very well, and stands as one of the director’s more underrated films, perhaps because it came out during that aforementioned golden run for Hitchcock; there were just so many other classics he directed within the almost 20-year-period that he was at his best.
Spellbound
- Release Date
-
November 8, 1945
- Runtime
-
111 minutes
Cast
-
Gregory Peck
John Ballantine
-
Ingrid Bergman
Dr. Constance Petersen
-
Leo G. Carroll
Dr. Murchison
-
Michael Chekhov
Dr. Alexander Brulov
3
‘Notorious’ (1946)
Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
One year on from Spellbound, Ingrid Bergman starred in another Alfred Hitchcock movie that might well feel even more timeless as a thriller: Notorious. Like Spellbound, Notorious blends the romance, mystery, and thriller genres, but it also has the aftermath of World War II playing a large role in the plot… perhaps not to the extent that it could be called a war movie, but the war is significant for the story at hand. Essentially, it’s about a man and woman in love who are also tasked with bringing Nazis to justice following the end of World War II, with difficulties arising because, for the arrest of one Nazi, the woman has to go undercover and pretend to fall for him.
It’s all very high stakes on both a personal and broad/societal level, but Notorious still manages to be unusually entertaining and emotional while still treating certain things seriously when it needs to. It’s an engaging story, and the core cast here is also great. Claude Rains gives one of his best-ever performances as a Nazi hiding out, while Bergman and Cary Grant are also excellent as the lovers tested by the task they need to undertake. And speaking of great Alfred Hitchcock movies that star Cary Grant…
Notorious
- Release Date
-
August 15, 1946
- Runtime
-
101 Minutes
2
‘North by Northwest’ (1959)
Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason
Okay, well, the other Cary Grant movie that Hitchcock directed was North by Northwest, and this one can’t be called a full-on romance film in the same way Notorious can. However, there’s a great deal of sexual innuendos in the movie, and the two lead characters, played by Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, are certainly flirtatious enough to make North by Northwest at least slightly qualifiable as a romance movie. It’s also a film that’s right on the edge of being definable as a comedy, since it’s generally light-hearted and very entertaining, though it proves suspenseful enough to be mostly a thriller/adventure flick.
Well, it’s entertaining and kind of cheeky at times, and that’s what’s most important. It’s another Hitchcock movie about a man on the run, with said man trying to prove his innocence while also unexpectedly falling for a woman who joins him for much of the journey, but the formula works, dammit. It’s sort of a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but with North by Northwest, Hitchcock took something that wasn’t broke and made it better. It could well be his most entertaining film, and the fact that it’s also (almost) a comedy and a romance movie at the same time is just icing on this cake that was baked way back in 1959, but still hasn’t gone stale yet, somehow.
1
‘Vertigo’ (1958)
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes
One of the most interesting things about Vertigo, at least compared to all the aforementioned movies, is that it’s not really romantic, but it is a romance film, considering love, desire, and (eventually) obsession are all explored here. It’s so upfront about unpacking these things in a dark and twisted way that it’s kind of hard to believe Vertigo came out in the 1950s. To label it “ahead of its time” would be quite the understatement.
Not only is it one of the best films of its decade, but you can also pretty easily include Vertigo among a list of the greatest movies of all time/of any decade. Alfred Hitchcock might’ve made some movies that were more entertaining (like North by Northwest) or scarier (like Psycho and, arguably, The Birds), but he never made a psychological thriller that was as unsettling, provocative, and haunting as Vertigo. It feels timeless, and is one of the all-time greatest dark romantic movies, so putting it at the #1 spot here feels like a no-brainer.
Vertigo
- Release Date
-
May 28, 1958
- Runtime
-
128 minutes
