First Alfred Hitchcock film opens

Young director Alfred Hitchcock's first film, 'The Pleasure Garden,' is released in England on this day in 1927. Hitchcock continued to direct English suspense films, but he moved to Hollywood in 1939 to take advantage of American filmmaking technology. His first American movie, 'Rebecca' won the 1940 Oscar for Best Picture and landed Hitchcock a Best Director nomination. During the 1950s, he started to experiment with his creativity and produced some of the most popular films of his career, including 'Psycho', 'The Birds', 'Vertigo', and 'Rear Window'. He became renowned for his psychologically complicated thrillers. In a Hitchcock movie, nothing on the screen happened by accident: He carefully chose each camera angle and sound effect. He maintained total creative control over his films. He won the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1979 and the following year he was knighted. He died in 1980.