Alfred Hitchcock

Known for: Psycho (1960), Vertigo (1958)

Alfred Hitchcock directed more than 50 films across a career spanning the silent era through the 1970s, developing the formal language of cinematic suspense — the zoom, the MacGuffin, the subjective point-of-view shot — that influenced generations of filmmakers. He worked first in Britain before moving to Hollywood in 1939. His run of films in the 1950s and early 1960s — Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) — constitutes one of the most sustained creative periods in cinema.