Hitchcock or how I became a classic movie lover

I just finished watching "Rear Window" for the umpteenth time and I had to comment something about it. I started writing about how cool Hitchcock's movies are, but I realized that what I really wanted to say is how grateful I am to Hitch and how nostalgic watching his films makes me.

I think the first time I heard about Hitchcock was at high school. Our philosophy teacher made a test in which you had to interpret some drawings and write what it was. I was a very good student but when this thing came up I just didn't know what to answer. I mean, really, what the heck is this?

No one at my class knew. I was very angry with my teacher. She said: "well, that's Hitchcock, you really haven't heard about him?? Ever??". Of course not!

He made his second apparition at university, second journalism year, when we had to watch a movie called "Rear Window" for our weekly media test. Like pretty much all our homework it was just that, another thing to do. So maybe that's why I don't remember the first time I watched a Hitchcock film. Or maybe I didn't watch it at all and I just asked a friend what was it about. Yeah, that's what happened. 

Then I took a course called "Audiovisual Review". Since I was a child, I watched with my family classics like "The Sound of Music" & "Gone with the wind". But I preferred modern movies and I thought I knew a lot about cinema. In that class I learned I didn't.

We had this teacher who was talking about many films, things and people I hadn't heard about. Like Billy Wilder and a French magazine called Cahiers du Cinema. We saw an old movie starring some guy called Cary Grant and a lady called Ginger Rogers. And Marilyn Monroe was there too. At least I knew who she was. Kind of. We saw "Ace in the hole" and we had to review it. I really liked it, but I remember I wrote an awful text, kind of "the movie is in black and white, so that reflects its mood" or something***. 

We were in one of the last classes, we had seen movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums" (I liked it), "Raging Bull" (too violent for me...says the girl who loves "Kill Bill") and "Dead Ringers" (too gross for me).

Then, we saw "Vertigo".

Wow.

The class was quiet, it was a winter afternoon.

It was dark.

I was immersed in Hitch's oneiric world. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. 

I'd never seen Jim Stewart or Kim Novak before. But their performances trapped me. 

And that was it. 

I think I bought like 20 of his movies to a guy who also loved Hitchcock. I liked them all.

I also remember this fan said "I think the girls in classic movies are much prettier and classier than modern actresses". Now I now what he meant. And that goes, of course, for the boys.

Then came Audrey to finish what Hitchcok had started. 

But that's another story.

*** I've been looking for that class notepad, but I haven't found it. I wish I could read the things I wrote 4 years ago and how I probably misspelled all these names that now are so familiar to me.