The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection

WARNER HOME VIDEO

IN THE 1950s Alfred Hitchcock entered his fourth decade of filmmaking, and this new issue of eight lesser-known Hollywood classics is cause to reassess his career. Half of these titles suggest that the 50s may have been Hitchcock's most consistently masterful period.

It is anchored by the 1956 film The Wrong Man, where Henry Fonda played a New York nightclub musician mistaken for a robber and sent to jail. Billed as "The first Hitchcock film based on a true story," it shows how artistry redefines "realism" as a powerfully evocative and persuasive style. The master of sometimes trifling suspense revealed that he had the substance of existential gravity. The Wrong Man was a commercial flop, but today it rivals-and perhaps it can now be admitted, influenced-Bresson's A Man Escapes. Fonda personifies a man whose life is subject to fate. The long sequence of his incarceration is both detached and resolute-no Bresson scene outdoes Hitch's spareness and spiritual awe. Add the subplot of Fonda's quiet, sorrowful wife (unforgettably played by Vera Miles) and you have one of the most emotionally unsettling films ever made-one of Hitchcock's very greatest.

I Confess (1953) repeats that seriousness, but it is most remarkable for the visual elan of a flashback sequence recalling a priest's (Montgomery Clift) preordained youth. Filmed expressionistically, Hitch matches the eroticism of Ingmar Bergman's The Naked Night, climaxing with an early-morning close-up of Clift smiling like the sunrise. Because I Confess and The Wrong Man are seldom-heralded Hitchcock movies, they yield the most surprises. Each one shows an unexpected approach to visual expression (certifying cinematographer Robert Burks as a genius of the black & white spectrum). It's fascinating to see how Hitch's 1953 visualization of post-War stress matches that of the most celebrated European art guys. The Wrong Man's credit sequence (a steady, lingering series of lap dissolves as a nightclub empties out) turns mundane life into the kind of cosmic suspense associated with Antonioni.

These DVDs prove Hitchcock (whom Godard called our greatest poet) could do it all-and within Hollywood codes. Suspicion, Foreign Correspondent, Stage Fright, Dial M for Murder, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, North by Northwest and Strangers on a Train (all in immaculate new transfers) are conventionally suspenseful and fun, but The Wrong Man and I Confess are revelations. They demonstrate a veteran artist at a stage when he can toss off masterpieces.

ARMOND WHITE