When Mary's mom was in town this past weekend, we watched two old Hitchcock films: Shadow of a Doubt and Foreign Correspondent. I'd never seen either.

Both of these were made well before Hitchcock really hit the height of his talents, but each have all the same undercurrents of his future films.

Shadow of a Doubt was just plain creepy. A character driven piece, it was a "psychological thriller" (or, as much of a thriller as a film can be from 1943). There are elements of future films–the sexual creepiness of Vertigo, the woman under cover, in danger, and with no place to turn (Notorious, Rebecca, North by Northwest).

Foreign Correspondent had all the trademarks of his espionage films like North by Northwest and Notorious, with a MacGuffin driving the plot. There's some great setpieces in the movie, and with the exception of one long section that really dragged, I liked this movie a lot better than Shadow of a Doubt, which is much more highly regarded apparently.