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Marnie (1964) Production: Hitchcock, UNIVERSAL
Screenplay:Jay Presson Allen from the novel by Winston Graham
Camera:
Costumes:
CAST: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker,
Martin Gabel, Louise Latham 
PLOT: 'Marnie' Edgar is a young,beautiful kleptomaniac. She steals from businessman Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) and disappears. But Mark is fascinated by her and tracks her down, forces her to marry him. Marnie, however is frigid and attempts suicide. Determined to understand his wife, Mark tracks down her mother, who was a prostitute, and discovers that as a child Marnie killed an aggressive client, an incident she has effectively blocked out of her memory. Mark reveal all to his wife, hoping to lead her away from kleptomania and toward a new life and good marriage. 
Hitchcock's main interest in the film lay in the fact that finally he had managed to lure Grace Kelly back to the screen after an absence of six years. But the outcry of Monaco's inhabitants forced her to decline the offer and she never seriously considered returning to the screen again.(Grace died tragically in a car accident in 1982) 
Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock's latest protegee, played Marnie opposite Sean Connery. 
The film is a stagy,flimsily psychological thriller, with an underlying of manifest sexuality and even if some scenes are handled masterfully, it is undoubtly a very minor Hitchcock. 
Frenzy (1972) (Made in UK)
PRODUCTION: Alfred Hitchcock,
Scenography: Anthony Shaffer from "Goodbye Piccadilly,Farewell Leicester Square" by Arthur LaBern
Camera:
CAST: Jon Finch, Barry Foster,
Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Clive Swift,
Alec McCowen, Vivien Merchant 
PLOT: Richard Blaney (Finch) is a dissolute former Squadron Leader who is suspected of being London's necktie murderer when his former wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) is found strangled with a tie similar to one of Blaney's around her neck. Then Blaney's mistress Babs (Anna Massey) is found murdered in similar fashion and he goes into hiding with his old friend Bob Rusk (Foster).Eventually caught by the police, and after a trial in the Old Bailey, Blaney is sentenced to life imprisonement. But Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) has his doubts about Blaney's guilt; even after Blaney escapes from prison, Oxford is convinced of his innocence. Eventually Blaney makes his way to Rusk's flat, where Oxford is waiting, and Rusk is revealed to be the real murderer.
The film shows that the old lion could still roar! Frenzy is a modern thriller, complete with gratuitous sex and violence and also with the usual Hitchcock way of letting the actual grisly scene entirely to the imagination. The Film was budgeted at a modest $2 million(and went on to make a respectable $15million) and gave the 73 years old director the opportunity to revisit the London of his youth. 
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Torn Curtain (1966) Production: Hitchcock, UNIVERSAL
Screenplay: Brian Moore
Music: John Addison
CAST: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews,
Lila Kedrova, HansJoerg Felmy,
Tamara Toumanova, Ludwig Donath,
David Opatoshu 
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| Julie Andrews, Paul Newman |
PLOT: Michael Armstrong is an American atomic scientist who pretends to defect in order to obtain a valuable top-secret formula from a professor in East Germany. The plot is complicated when his fiancee Sarah (Julie Andrews) believes his 'defection' and follows him across the Iron Curtain. Armstrong is forced to kill a bodyguard before he and Sarah can escape their pursuers at a ballet performance and finally return to the West on a Scandinavian ship.
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| Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Lyla Kedrova |
Though the stars and director names attracted the audiences and the film was a box-office success, it was a flaccidly directed thriller,overburdened with too many cliches and the miscasting and mismatching of its stars.The film looked dated and stilted and Newman's performance is mannered and shows the divergence of styles between the actor and director. Hitchcock 50th film and continued the downward spiral of the director. 
Topaz (1969) Production: Hitchcock,UNIVERSAL
Screenplay: Samuel Taylor from a novel by Leon Uris
Camera:
Music:
CAST: John Forsythe, Frederick Stafford,
Dany Robin, John Vernon, Karin Dor,
Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret 
PLOT: The plot of Topaz is a complex one, involving a Communist organization in the heart of NATO, and an anti-Castro faction at work in Cuba at the height of the 1962 Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. 
The cast is largely undistinguished and the film was (and is) dated in a most unnostalgic way and none of the characters come alive. It is an antediluvian piece about espionage, with the Communists no more convincing than boogeymen. Hitchcock's career was in the doldrums, he had not made a film worthy of his name in nearly ten years and many felt that at 70 he should take an honorable retirement.
The two hours and four minutes of Topaz seem like purgatory, and the film is best swiftly passed over. 
Hitchcock's CAMEO from Topaz 
Family Plot (1976) Production: Hitchcock, .
Screenplay:Ernest Lehman from the novel "The Rainbow Pattern" by Victor Canning
Camera:
Music:
CAST: Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris,
William Devane, Karen Black,
Cathleen Nesbitt,
PLOT: The film is a difficult one to condense, as it follows two totally different strands of narrative, only joining them together some way into the film.
Spiritualist Blanche Tyler( Harris) and her boyfriend George (Dern) are asked by rich spinster Julia Rainbird (Nesbitt) to try to find her heir, a nephew who has been missing since childwood. Simultaneously Arthur Adamson (Devane) and Fran (Black) are undertaking a series of bizarre kidnaps and Jewel thefts. Eventually, the paths of the two couples irrevocabily entwine and it is revealed that Arthur is the missing heir.However, afraid that they will discover his crimina l activities, Arthur tries to murder Blanche and George. They escape, trapping Arthur and Fran who are then arrested. For their efforts Blanche and George are well rewarded by Miss Rainbird. 
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| Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern |
Family Plot was a totally appropriate Swansong for the great Maestro. it is a rich, assured film, s one would expect from such a venerable director as Hitchcock, but it is also a surprisingly buoyant and exuberant film, the work of a young enthusiast, not an accomplished master. William Devane (who was brought in to substitute Roy Thinnes previously cast for the part)is a memorable addition to the glowing list of Hitchcock villains,on the style of Mason and Rains.
The script by Lehman and his collaboration with Hitchcock produced the old magic of "North by Nortwest" even without Cary Grant. Even the runaway car sequence is as thrilling.
The critics delightedly recognized it as a masterly film from an old master and raved about it and the audiences were delighted.
Hitchcock, even at 78 was already working on a new project about British spy George Blake, that should have been his next film...
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| Bruce Dern |
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