The Learning Beyond the Classics series is organized into four modules that

cut across different time periods and production circumstances.


o The first module explores Crimes and Criminals in Hitchcock’s films in
Hollywood and the UK, beginning with Psycho (1960) and moving to The
Wrong Man (1956) and The Lodger(1927). As we consider the nature of the
crime and the behavior of the accused, the boundaries between guilt and
innocence begin to blur.
o The second module focuses on Women, Guilt, and the Law, opening
with Rebecca (1940) and Marnie (1964), followed by The Paradine
Case (1947) and Sabotage (1936). The screening of Marnie is timed to create
a dialogue with the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production,
based on the same book that inspired Hitchcock’s film. The films in this group
spur us to consider how love, guilt, crime, and the law become intertwined in
Hitchcock’s films, and how women and femininity played a role as those
themes mixed.
o The third module explores films dealing with Conscience and Complicity and
includes Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear
Window (1954) and Vertigo(1958), films in which characters are drawn into
ambiguous and often dangerous situations that trouble neat distinctions
between good and evil.
o
o The last module of films delves into a topic that many consider quintessential
Hitchcock: Spies and Spycraft. We will screen Notorious (1946), The Thirty-
Nine Steps (1935), and North by Northwest (1959) to study how characters
become caught up accidentally in situations they don’t at first understand. The
people they meet and the spaces they navigate seem ordinary, yet Hitchcock
reveals the turmoil lurking beneath seemingly mundane situations.