The Best of Alfred Hitchcock Trivia Quiz

Answer: "Foreign Correspondent" (1940)

"Foreign Correspondent" (1940) is a spy caper involving an American reporter and his lovely partner. It was nominated for best picture in 1941, but it didn't win. In fact, Hitchcock was not even nominated for his direction of this movie. When compared to the other films mentioned in this question, "Foreign Correspondent" is not as well remembered as exemplary of Hitchcock's work, and it and was actually beaten out of the Best Picture award by another Hitchcock film. Amazingly, "Vertigo", "Notorious" and "The Birds", all well-known and loved Hitch films, were not even nominated for Best Picture or Best Director.

More often than not, the nominees for Best Picture are also nominated for Best Director, showing how important the director's hand is in making a great movie. It is considered a slap in the face to the director when his picture is nominated, but the director is not. In this case, at least "Foreign Correspondent" was recognized, even if Hitch was snubbed.

Answer: Rebecca

"Rebecca", a suspenseful tale of a woman's struggle to overcome the shadow of her husband's deceased first wife, did win the Best Picture Oscar, but Hitchcock did not win for Best Director, some say because the producer, David Selznick, exercised such a strong hand that he was actually the "behind-the-scenes" director instead of Hitchcock.

The other movies mentioned, "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), "The Lady Vanishes" (1939) and "Suspicion" (1941) did not win the Best Picture Oscar either. In fact, "Rebecca" is the only Hitchcock film to have garnered that prize.

The year that Hitchcock could have come away with great glory was actually a double snub for him, and started a tradition of nominations that would fail to honor his work. The winner of the Best Director prize this year was John Ford for "Grapes of Wrath".

Answer: It was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, and it got only the latter.

By making a second film with Joan Fontaine, the star of the prior year's "Rebecca", Hitchcock starting a tradition of working with blonde actresses in multiple films and molding their performances. In this case, it worked for Fontaine, who did indeed did win the Best Actress award for portraying a terrified wife convinced her husband wants to kill her. Cary Grant was her co-star in that movie, and his acting was not recognized by the Academy, perhaps because it was such a different type of role for him. Hitch's direction was not even nominated, and the film lost its only other nomination, Best Picture, to "How Green Was My Valley", for which John Ford also won Best Director (for the second year in a row). Ironically, Ford's film used black-and-white cinematography to depict a green valley (and even more ironically, it won the award for best b&w cinematography).

Though Hitch was again snubbed by having his film nominated for best picture and having his direction efforts ignored, this was eclipsed by a more famous snubbing of the 1942 Oscars: the shut-out of "Citizen Kane," considered by many to be one of the best films ever made. It did not get the Best Picture or Best Director awards, and won only Best Writing (Original Screenplay) (an award shared by Orson Welles and Joseph L. Mankiewicz).

Answer: False

Though it is true that neither film was nominated for any Oscars, the films are not remakes of each other and are not related in any way. Hitchcock's movie is a comedy with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, in which a couple discovers that their marriage ceremony wasn't valid after years of being together.

The Jolie-Pitt film shared the same title, but was about two spies and killers who were married to each other, but who were each unaware of the other's true profession.

Answer: It was nominated for Best Writing, Original Story, but it did not win the Oscar.

"Shadow of a Doubt" did not win the writing honors that year, though it was a very well-written story and it is still admired today.

The following exchange between Uncle Charlie (played by Joseph Cotten) and Young Charlie (played by Theresa Wright), shows how cleverly it was written.

Uncle Charlie: How was church, Charlie? Did you count the house? Turn anybody away?
Young Charlie: No. Room enough for everyone.
Uncle Charlie: Well, I'm glad to hear that. The show's been running such a long time, I thought maybe attendance might be falling off.

"The Human Comedy", written by William Saroyan, won the award for Best Writing, Original Story. It was set during WWII and probably caught the spirit of the audiences of the day, though it is not widely known today. Mickey Rooney starred in the film.

Answer: "Lifeboat" (1944)

The thriller "Lifeboat" is set entirely on the titular boat, out at sea. It is a psychological drama that has propagandistic elements evident today, years after WWII, but which were understandable for the time that the movie was made. It was also one of the few film performances of Bankhead's.

Two of the other films listed did garner Hitch nominations for best picture, "Rear Window" and "Psycho". Though they were set in confined areas, neither was limited to a single set. "Rear Window" takes place mostly in the apartment of a bed-ridden photographer played by Jimmy Stewart who passes time looking out over a courtyard into the apartments of his neighbors, out of boredom. Those other sets show slices of life and are independent sets themselves. "Psycho" takes place for most of the movie in the Bates Hotel, but there are scenes in the city at the beginning of the movie as well as at the end, and the hotel itself includes different sets, among them the infamous shower.

The other film listed here, "Rope", was also shot mostly on a single set. It was an interesting experiment by Hitch, in that he shot it in just ten takes, which lasted from four-and-a-half to a little more than ten minutes (which was the longest length of film that a reel could hold at that time). It is not the correct answer here, though, because "Rope" was a controversial film when it came out, and Hitch was not nominated for Best Director. The film starred Jimmy Stewart.

Answer: True

Once again, though he was nominated at least, Hitch was eventually shut out of awards, this time by Billy Wilder's "Lost Weekend", which got both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars that year. Some feel that this was due more to "Spellbound's" weak storyline, which today seems almost ludicrous (pop psychology and psychiatry at its worst), and the strange dream sequence by Salvador Dali probably didn't help either. Nevertheless, Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck are attractive stars and this film is still worth a look.

Answer: Best Cinematography

"To Catch a Thief" was actually nominated for Best Art Direction/Set Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Cinematography, and it won only the last award listed. It was not nominated for Best Original Screenplay or Best Supporting Actor. Delbert Mann's "Marty" was the picture that took home Best Picture and Best Director honors that year.

Hitch's film was an enjoyable romp with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, shot in what would later become Princess Grace's home, Monaco. The famous chase scene in the film was shot at what was later the scene of Kelly's death in a car accident in 1982.

Answer: Hitchcock's picture appeared in a newspaper ad that one of the passengers had.

Hitchcock's cameo in "Lifeboat" is in the form of a before and after weight-loss ad in a paper. This was an ingenious way of accomplishing a cameo in a film that was set out at sea with a fixed cast. A walk-on was obviously impossible in these circumstances.

Hitch didn't start doing cameos in his films until his third film, "The Lodger" (1926), and in "The Wrong Man", his cameo is the presence of his voice as narrator at the beginning of his film. Hitch soon realized that people were looking for his cameos and not paying as much attention to his films as they should until they "found" him, and he began appearing earlier in his movies because of that.

"Lifeboat" received three Oscar nominations, Best Cinematography, Best Writing and Best Director. It didn't win any of them.

Answer: Ingrid Bergman

Bergman appeared visibly moved to be able to present this much-deserved honor to Hitch. Other stars who had worked with Hitch and who were there to honor him that night were Anthony Perkins, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. When he had finally won some type of overdue recognition from the Academy in the form of the Irving G. Thalberg award in 1968, Hitch's speech was limited to a stark, "Thank you." This time, even Hitch was moved and he spoke longer while seated at the AFI banquet.

He dedicated his award to his wife, Alma Revielle, who was his longtime collaborator, professionally and in life. Hitch died in April of 1980, just months after the AFI ceremony. Bergman herself did not live much longer, dying of cancer in August 1982.