Toward the end of his 60-year career, some voices in Hollywood believed the once-great master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was now long past his prime. The heyday of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho was long gone, and instead, by the later 60s and turn of the 70s, Hitchcock was battling through back-to-back commercial and critical failures. In typical Hitchcockian style, however, there was a twist at the end. 

HIS CAREER

In 1972, Hitchcock released his penultimate film, the gritty thriller Frenzy, starring relative unknown Jon Finch as a man wrongly accused of a string of murders in London (and fellow relative unknown, the British television actor Barry Foster, as the real killer enjoying his life and freedom). It proved a masterful return to form that—despite an X-certificate and a gruesome script that led to Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, and Vanessa Redgrave all turning it down—won plaudits with the critics, was shown at Cannes, and earned six times its $2 million budget. One final release, 1976’s Family Plot, would follow, before one of the greatest film directors of all time died, at the age of 80, four years later. 

HIS DEATH

As tributes poured in from around the world and the details of Hitchcock’s death were made public in the press, one final story began to emerge, however: his rather poignant, and typically dry-witted, last words. 

Off camera, Hitchcock’s final years saw him plagued with several health issues. He was troubled with arthritis, had to have a pacemaker fitted, ended up reliant on a wheelchair to get around, and suffered for many years with the kidney disease that would eventually lead to his death. Finally, surrounded by his family, he passed away at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, on April 29, 1980. 

Besides his wife, daughter, and grandchildren, however, Hitchcock’s final days saw him, rather unexpectedly (having long drifted away from his Jesuit Catholic education), requesting to take Mass. Two priests were called to his home, who together heard his confession (and, reportedly, his thoughts on cinema’s current fondness for robot movies) just days before his death. 

HIS LAST WORDS

It is perhaps this last-minute interest in religion that influenced Hitchcock’s final words. According to popular reports, Hitchcock commented on his deathbed, “One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death,” adding lastly, “although Catholics have their hopes.” 

As well as a thoughtful commentary on life itself, Hitchcock’s words have been interpreted as a commentary on his filmmaking and cinematic output too, with many of his best-loved films having eleventh-hour twists that turn their storylines on their head. The quip about Catholicism, meanwhile, wasn’t the only way in which Hitchcock somewhat trolled the church in his final days, as well as ensuring that his friends and family still didn’t know what to expect of the man even after his death. 

According to reports, at Hitchcock’s funeral, the mourners arrived to find no coffin in the church; he had quietly arranged to be cremated before the ceremony, so as not to be present—and so not in control of proceedings—at the very end.  

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