2. James Stewart in any Alfred Hitchcock film
Aww, shucks. Those two words alone label James Stewart. He was Americas sweetheart. Who cannot find his performances in films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Its a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and The Shop Around the Corner as adorable expressions withdrawn from the heart? James Stewart was an American symbol due to his lighthearted delivery. He usually played the shy, incorruptible, and innocent man who provided smiles even to those parched from a doses of passion and sentiment. He was a hero who stood by ideals and gifted even the most undeserved with the benefit of the doubt at least until the master of suspense came along. Hitchcock is amongst the most famous directors of all time. Not a single thriller out there can claim to not be indebted to his influence. Few praise the magnificent performances that he managed to squeeze out of his actors, and Stewart remains a prime example. Jimmy Stewart is a stranger in films like Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and most importantly, Vertigo. How can the Stewart revered in the United States fit within these storylines, then? How can you have a Hitchcock thriller and mystery with a man incapable of sharing a shadow of a doubt? No pun intended. Hitchcock turned Stewart into a self-assured and macabre critical thinker. The beauty of this transformation is that his distrust, obsession, and ego culminated the narratives of each film; without Stewarts newfound investigative nature, the films would not conclude in the ways they did. Phillip and Brandon would get away with murder in Rope; Madeleine would have always been dead in Vertigo; his neighbor would succeed in hiding the corpse in Rear Window. A normal James Stewart would probably be dumbfounded and refuse to incriminate another for murder; he struggled enough denouncing his nature with politics in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. How could he possibly pull through in a Hitchcock film when something as sanguine as death was involved? He did - and in incredible fashion.