Hitchcock Quotes Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Birds

A beautiful blonde comes to town and the next thing you know, birds begin attacking people! I hate when that happens! Bored socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) pursues sexy bachelor Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) from San Francisco to his weekend home in Bodega Bay. Once there, the bird attacks progress from a solo seagull attack on Melanie to a full-scale assault on the town.

After Bodega Bay is thrown into fiery chaos, survivors huddle together in a diner where Melanie is confronted by the hysterical mother (a terrific Doreen Lang) of two frightened children. "I think you're evil. EVIL!" It's a great moment, one of the emotional highlights of the movie. Melanie responds by slapping the woman across the face.

This shuts the mother up but Melanie will face worse - much worse - in the final moments of this truly great film.

Answer: Rear Window

James Stewart made four films with Hitch. Some critics would point to "Rear Window" as their greatest collaboration. Here, Stewart plays photographer L.B. Jeffries who broke his leg on the job and is confined to a wheelchair in his Greenwich Village apartment. He passes the time by spying on his neighbors, first with binoculars, then with a telephoto lens. He ultimately becomes convinced that one of his neighbors is a murderer. His confederates are his girlfriend, Lisa (the oh-so-beautiful Grace Kelly) and his insurance company nurse, Stella (the oh-so-irascible Thelma Ritter).

It's Stella who offers this slice of wisdom in an early encounter with Jeffries. Having caught him spying on a beautiful, scantily clad blonde across the courtyard, Stella provides us with what may be the moral of this particularly thrilling story - "What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change."

Answer: Psycho

Norman Bates - the very name can send a chill through the spine. Is there a more twisted, pathetic, menacing, heartbreaking, and ultimately fascinating character in the history of American movies? Anthony Perkins gives one of the truly great, truly iconic performances of all time. How he was not even nominated for an Oscar baffles me still.

"Psycho", of course, tells the story of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a Phoenix secretary who steals $40,000 from her boss' arrogant client, hightails it out of town and, ultimately, makes a particularly poor choice in overnight accommodations. It takes a sister, a boyfriend, a private eye, a bumbling cop, and a smug psychiatrist to sort it all out... and then we're still not sure what it all means. Delicious!

At any rate, the quote in question is spoken by Norman in his chilling, pre-shower encounter with Marion. It's a beautifully written, beautifully acted scene between these two lost souls who, ironically, seem to share a common bond of loneliness and desperation. Norman expresses it most eloquently.

Norman: "I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch."

Marion: "Sometimes... we deliberately step into those traps."

Norman: "I was born into mine."

Answer: Strangers on a Train

In "Strangers on a Train", Patricia Hitchcock, Alfred's actress daughter, has the role of her career as Barbara, a staid U.S. senator's fun and feisty daughter. And she gets all of the film's best comic moments.

"Strangers on a Train" tells the tale of Bruno (Robert Walker) and Guy (Farley Granger), two men whose chance encounter on--wait for it--a 'train' sets this killer plot in motion. Bruno, a bored psychopath, proposes to the mild-mannered Guy that they swap murders - "criss-cross"! Bruno will kill Guy's cheating wife and Guy will kill Bruno's hated father. What could go wrong? Guy laughs it off but Bruno doesn't think it's funny. When he follows through on his end of the bargain and kills Guy's wife, Guy finds himself in a bit of a bind. We spend the rest of the movie getting him out of it.

It's after the murder of the cheating wife that the above dialogue exchange occurs. The senator, as politicians will, puts a somber and sober spin on the murder. Babs is having none of it. She knows that the woman was a "tramp" and isn't afraid to say it. Plus, it frees up Guy to marry her sister! It's a win-win!

Answer: Rope

Loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, "Rope" tells the story of two young men - played by John Dall and Farley Granger - who imagine themselves intellectually superior and, to prove it, they murder a friend. With me so far? Oh, yeah, then they put his body in a trunk and invite a bunch of people over--the friend's father, the friend's fiancée - and serve dinner from the very trunk that contains the body of their newly dead friend.

Just for the record, Leopold and Loeb never did any of this stuff, even though what they did do was equally stupid and pointless. The whole point in "Rope", of course, is for the murderers to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by killing someone they deem inferior and then playing cruel psychological games with his body. What they don't count on is that their old schoolteacher Rupert (James Stewart), who fed them all this nonsense about intellectual superiority to begin with, is actually kind of, well, intellectually superior. He figures it all out and once he does, he opens the trunk and confronts them - "By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong?" - throwing their fatal arrogance back in their faces.

What makes "Rope" most notable is the way in which the film was shot in one continuous take. Actually, it was shot in ten takes of between four and a half and ten minutes (the maximum amount of film that a camera magazine or projector reel could hold). At the end of each take, the camera would go behind a dark object and this is where they would edit the shots together to form the illusion of one continuous take. Hitchcock's thinking was that since the action of the film occurred in real time, the manner in which the film was shot should reflect that.

Answer: Vertigo

When it opened in 1958, "Vertigo" received mixed reviews and, much to Hitchcock's disappointment, failed at the box-office. Since then, however, this remarkable film has taken its rightful place as one of America's greatest cinematic treasures. A 2012 "Sight & Sound" critics' poll named "Vertigo" the greatest film of all time. Hitch would be pleased.

Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is a San Francisco detective suffering from crippling acrophobia when he is approached by an old friend who asks him to investigate the strange behavior of his wife. The investigation pushes Scottie into a new realm very close to madness and obsession. The object of his obsession is the beautiful but deeply enigmatic Madeline (Kim Novak). After her death, Scottie tips over the edge into madness but soon encounters Judy (also Novak), a virtual double for Madeline. He begins to transform her into Madeline, whose memory continues to haunt him. Towards the end of the film, Scottie comes to realize that he has merely been a pawn in his old friend's cruel game and he confronts the complicit Judy with this heartbreaking line of dialogue. Please note that I am being very careful not to reveal too much, just in case you haven't seen this movie. If you haven't seen it, SEE IT! It's a genuine masterpiece.

Answer: The Wrong Man

"For the first time Alfred Hitchcock goes to real life for his thrills! It's all true and all suspense - the all-round biggest Hitchcock hit ever to hit the screen!"

So said the press releases for "The Wrong Man", Hitch's first and only attempt at documentary style drama. It tells the story of Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda), a down on his luck musician who is mistakenly identified as a criminal and must clear his name. Hitchcock protege Vera Miles gives the performance of her career as Manny's emotionally stricken wife.

Early in the film when Manny is apprehended, the arresting officer, Lt. Bowers (Harold J. Stone) tries to encourage Manny to cooperate by assuring him that, if innocent, he has nothing to fear. It's a false promise as it turns out. Manny is innocent but is dragged through Hitchcockian hell nonetheless. Not one of Hitch's masterpieces, "The Wrong Man" is still a compelling and well-made film.

Answer: Notorious

"Notorious" may rank as Hitch's greatest film of the 1940s - though it gets stiff competition from "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Rebecca". Ingrid Bergman shines as Alicia Huberman, a woman who indulges in drink and debauchery following the conviction of her Nazi father by the US government in the aftermath of WWII. She is recruited by a US government agent named Devlin (a dark, enigmatic Cary Grant) to infiltrate a group of her father's Nazi friends in Rio de Janeiro. Oh yeah, did I mention that she's in love with Devlin? After all, he looks just like Cary Grant. Who wouldn't fall in love with him?

Still, Alicia follows through on her job and connects with one old Nazi friend in particular - Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) who falls head-over-heels for her, never suspecting that she is a spy. They marry but Sebastian ultimately uncovers her secret. The only person he can confide in is his mother since his Nazi cronies would undoubtedly murder him for allowing this American agent into their inner circle. In this quote - "We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity, for a time" - the mother seeks to reassure her bumbling Nazi son that he is safe from all of the other Nazis for the time being - after all, who would expect him to be quite this stupid?

Answer: North by Northwest

"North by Northwest" tells the tale of Madison Ave. exec Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant, perhaps the greatest movie star of all in perhaps his greatest role). A group of foreign spies mistake him for George Kaplan, a US government agent, and spend the next two hours chasing him across the USA. Along the way, Thornhill is falsely accused of murder, nearly murdered himself, crop-dusted, almost run over by a truck, and seduced by a beautiful double agent aptly named Eve (Eva Marie Saint). He survives, of course. He's Cary Grant. He can't NOT survive. And he gets the girl. He's Cary Grant. He can't NOT get the girl. It's a thrill ride and one of Hitch's most thoroughly entertaining films.

"North by Northwest" is rich with theatrical allusions, including the title which is taken from a line in Shakespeare's "Hamlet". When first kidnapped, Thornhill complains to his captors that he has theater tickets for the evening and thus it's a bad time for a kidnapping. His nemesis, Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) retorts, "With such expert playacting, you make this very room a theater."

As to the quote in question - Thornhill eventually tracks Vandamm to an art auction in Chicago and confronts him; Vandamm responds, "Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you're the outraged Madison Avenue advertising executive who claims that he has been mistaken for someone else. Next, you play the fugitive from justice supposedly trying to clear himself of a crime he knows he didn't commit. And now, you're the jealous lover spurned by love and betrayal. Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the F.B.I. and a little more from the Actor's Studio."

Answer: The 39 Steps

"The 39 Steps" is my favorite Hitchcock from his English period. Robert Donat gives a terrific performance as Richard Hannay, a Canadian living in London who tries to help a counterespionage agent. When she is murdered by a foreign spy ring, Hannay, in true Hitchcockian fashion, stands accused and must go on the run even as he tries to stop the spy ring from stealing top secret information and smuggling it out of the country. With "The 39 Steps", Hitch laid the groundwork for future masterpiece, "North by Northwest".

In one of the film's best scenes, Hannay seeks refuge from his pursuers by sneaking into a political meeting. Seated on the stage, he finds that all eyes are on him as he is mistaken for the keynote speaker. He boldly rises to his feet and addresses the crowd - even though he has no idea who or what he's supposed to talk about! Here is the speech in its entirety:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for my hesitation in rising just now, but I'd entirely failed while listening to the chairman's flattering description of the next speaker to realize he was talking about me. As for you, may I say from the bottom of my heart and with the utmost sincerity how delighted and relieved I am to find myself in your presence at this moment. Delighted because of your friendly reception and relieved because so long as I stand on this platform I am delivered from the cares and anxieties which must always be the lot of a man in my position. When I journeyed up to Scotland a few days ago , traveling on the Highland Express over that magnificent Forth Bridge - that monument to Scottish engineering and Scottish muscle - that is to say, on that journey I had no idea that in a few days time I should find myself addressing an important political meeting. I had planned a very different program for myself. A very different program. You'd be for the moors to shoot something. Or somebody. I'm a rotten shot. Anyhow, I little thought I should be speaking tonight in support of that brilliant, young statesman. The gentleman on my right, already known among you as one destined to make no uncertain mark in politics. In other words, your future member of Parliament, your candidate, Mr. McCrocodile."