"This is a heart-wrenching film. It’s one of about three films that exist that truly still make me cry. I saw this at our local art-house cinema in Texas when it came out, and it was one of the first films that I saw that made me want to be a filmmaker in a real way."

"All of Hitchcock — I don’t think I can even identify a particular film. After I transitioned out of the art world into film, I was doing a graduate degree at Columbia University and I took a class with Andrew Sarris, who I think is one of the treasures of the film world. We looked at an overview of Hitchcock during the two-year course, starting with his silents. And there are some extraordinary silent movies of his; I’m not sure how readily available they are, but there’s a phenomenal film — I think it’s called Murder! — and it’s silent, but it’s as tense as Psycho or The Birds or Notorious or Rear Window. [Editor’s note: Hitchcock’s 1930 film Murder! was one of his first talkies, but his 1927 silent, The Lodger, is one of his most celebrated. Both were released jointly to home video in 2002.] It’s a silent film, but it’s Hitchcock. All of his signatures, all the signifiers, everything we’ve come to know and love about Hitchcock, they’re all in play."