Hitchcock's first completed film was 1925's The Pleasure Garden, followed by over a dozen silents until the director's first talkie Blackmail in 1929.

The 1930s were a budding time for the young director, both in terms of sowing the seeds of his work in general as well as discovering and beginning to hone his skills at cultivating terror and suspense.

By 1939, Hitchcock seemed more than ready for a change and the director accepted a then lavish offer from producer David O. Selznick to relocate to America. The start of a new decade ushered in his first movie in the United States: 1940's excellent suspenser Rebecca starring screen greats Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

Based on the classic Daphne du Maurier story of a woman living in the shadow of her husband's former wife, Rebecca not only won the Academy Award for Best Picture but clearly remains one of Hitch's artistic triumphs.

After that, Hitchcock's creative reaches (and successes) were virtually non-stop. In the first half of the 1940s alone, he gave us 1941's excellent paranoia laced Suspicion (also with Joan Fontaine), 1943's psycho-in-the-family thriller Shadow of a Doubt (one of the director's preferred films) as well as the effective John Steinbeck-penned Lifeboat (1943).

The latter half of the 1940s was a hardcore double whammy. The director's 1945 psychological thriller Spellbound is an excellent mood piece with superb performances from Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

Bergman returned the following year for Hitchcock's enjoyable spy terror Notorious. Co starring Hitch leading man Cary Grant and boasting an excellent bittersweet ending, Notorious still lays claim to one of the director's best moments: the suspenseful tracking in shot to Bergman's hand... clutching that forbidding cellar key.

Next up were the Technicolor years. And a fresh beginning for the director. Starting his own production company Transatlantic Pictures, Hitchcock inaugurated his new life by creating 1948's single set staged Rope.

Beautifully shot in subdued hues and featuring expertly mounted suspense, the stagy Rope may have been a studious experiment in filming techniques but ultimately remains one of the most underrated entries from the director.

Hitchcock's zenith climbed even higher with the 1950s. His successful television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965) featured the director introducing various thriller stories with his trademark black humor.

And he made some of the best films of that decade. The first half of the 1950s Hitch delivered the superior thriller Strangers on a Train. Poor Farley Granger meets psychotic Robert Walker and to avoid suspicion each man agrees to murder a nuisance in the other's life. But what Granger believes is intellectual posturing, Walker takes to deadly reality!

1954 was a banner year for the director. He crafted both the adept murder vehicle Dial M For Murder (those scissors!) as well as unveiling his best film up to that point: the flawless Rear Window.

A tour de force of obsessive voyeurism, hacking suspicion and stunning staging, Window remains a picture perfect achievement from its easygoing beginning to its harrowing climax.

The remainder of the 1950s housed perhaps one of the most discussed Hitchcock films: 1958's Vertigo. Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo is a haunting ghost love story like no other: beautifully manipulative, visually provocative...and strangely degenerative.

It's possibly no exaggeration to suggest that by the 1960s Hitchcock was able to do whatever he wanted...so he made PSYCHO (1960). A low budget horror film using the same production crew from his television show, PSYCHO was as a much a technical whim as a black humor joke told by the director. And yet the result was a powerhouse terror ride...the true beginning of the slasher subgenre.

Hitchcock followed his splatter fun with 1963's nature amok classic The Birds. He had been directing for over forty years...but had lost none of his prowess. A spirited disaster terror buoyed by technical effects mastery, The Birds is a winged frenzy that belongs in the top echelon of Hitch's efforts.

The next ten years held for Hitchcock films that reacquainted or linked newly joined themes the director had explored over the past four decades. 1972's harsh Frenzy is a likable comingling of genial black humor and stark psychoses.

After potentially the most distinguished artistic career in film, Hitchcock died in 1980. His work has been praised, analyzed, debated, deconstructed, dissected, imitated, reworked, critiqued...and appreciated. When all is said and done, nothing alters the fact that Hitchcock was one of the most brilliant and influential filmmakers bestowed on the world of cinema. His legacy is staggering.

NOTABLE HITCHCOCK FILMS	YEAR
The 39 Steps	1935
The Birds	1963
Dial M for Murder	1954
Frenzy	1972
The Lady Vanishes	1938
The Man Who Knew Too Much	1956
Marnie	1964
North by Northwest	1959
Notorious	1946
PSYCHO	1960
Rear Window	1954
Rebecca	1940
Rope	1948
Shadow of a Doubt	1943
Spellbound	1945
Strangers on a Train	1951
Suspicion	1941
Vertigo	1958
The Wrong Man	1956