Above all, Hitchcock inspires comparison with Shakespeare, a conjunction that some may find hard to justify but which, having studied and written on each, I am more and more inclined to support. Both had a prescribed structure, adapted material taken from elsewhere to their own lexicon and vision, and used humour to season their drama. Both were enormously confident in their imaginations, prolific in their output, and astute in the ways of business and promotion. Both were moralists who took issue with the morality of their day while managing not to show their loyalties too clearly or ever lose popular support. “You have to design your film just as Shakespeare did his plays – for an audience”, Hitchcock told Truffaut.

Shakespeare’s greatness is wedded to language and Hitchcock’s to cinematic expression, in keeping with the ages in which they worked. Hitchcock’s apprenticeship during the silent era meant that he would always think, first, in images, and his greatest sequences are without dialogue (though often brilliantly scored). Some of my favourites: the camera closing in on the blinking drummer in Young and Innocent (1937); the train’s arrival with a cloud of black smoke bringing the suave killer to his sister’s family in Shadow of a Doubt; the extraordinary stalking and strangling scene in the fairground in Strangers on a Train; the reverse crane shot that shows us the key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand in Notorious (1946); the panning shot that opens Rear Window and tells us everything we need to know about the laid-up protagonist; the stabbing in the shower in Psycho; and the movement through the cemetery in Family Plot (1976). Even a disappointingly incoherent film like Topaz (1969) is made unforgettable by the image of a woman falling to the floor after being shot, her purple dress cascading around her like a pool of blood, but also like a flower, finding its fullest expression in the moment of death.