A chilling moment with Hitch

The master and his daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell

The shower scene from Psycho and the attack sequence from The Birds are among the favourite Hitchcock moments of News Online readers.

Hundreds of readers have been sending in their choice Hitchcock scene.

The film director contributed some of the most famous scenes in cinematic history.

The most obvious choice was predictably the shower scene in Psycho.

But Matthias Mittermeier of Germany justifies the choice by reminding us that Hitchcock did not show "the killing in all its brutal details. In fact you don't see anything, which allows your subconscious to make it even worse."

PE Cosby from the USA is one of the many who for whom the scene "to this day gives me shivers. I nearly always remember the scene any time I step behind the shower curtain.

"I leave the curtain a little open so that I will not be surprised by even an innocent passerby."

Suspense

Janet Leigh: Readers can't forget the shower scene

The attack sequence from The Birds is another favourite scene. But the suspense before the attack is preferred by A Lowton from the UK and Ron Oliver from the USA: "where the birds are lined up on the telephone cables, roof tops and fences, waiting for the children to come out¿"

Aside from the action-packed, dramatic Hitchcock, there are stunning moments full of suspense, the point at which the audience shares characters' shock, realisation and fear.

Paul Condon in the UK and Richard Motroni in the USA voted for the moment in Rear Window "when killer Raymond Burr looks into Jimmy Stewart's camera lens and discovers who has been spying on him."

There are many scenes of dramatic tension and irony.

Samantha Kuypers in Canada and Rachel Sykes from England wrote of how "Jimmy Stewart watches helplessly from his window as Grace Kelly is caught snooping around the murderer's apartment" in Rear Window.

Or scenes where murdered body is about to be found. Ross and Gordon Irvine both from the UK cite from Rope "the maid cleans the food off the top of the cabinet where the body is hidden."

Characterisation

Both Hitchcock and his actors are responsible for the painstaking characterisation.

Ian Skelton in the UK tells us we are able to empathise with Cary Grant in North By North-West because he is utterly convincing as "a normal guy being chased by the bad guys."

David Ryder from the UK points to "how close the viewer is drawn into the same obsession as Stewart's" in Vertigo.

Ian Scott in the UK describes as "perfect storytelling" how "in Rear Window the opening sequence panning around James Stewart's flat gives you everything you need to know about his character in 30 seconds."

The painstaking manner in which films were planned, scripted and shot is best seen in the long takes. Gordon Irvine from the UK describes the penultimate scene in Rope:

"From James Stewart cranking up the metronome, to the maid slowly clearing the books off the coffin, all the way to the monogrammed hat that gives the game away. All shot in one incredible take - Hitchcock's finest eight minutes."

We sometimes forget that Hitchcock injected a degree of humour into many of his films. Melanie in the UK tells of the auction scene in North By North-West "when Cary Grant tries (and succeeds) in getting arrested, and manages to annoy everyone there."