Based on an essay by Alfred Hitchcock

Short film

The list of Hitchcock’s fears—heights, the police, beautiful women, conflict, rejection—seems endless. Filming those fears was a way to face them and, at least temporarily, purge them. In Why I am Afraid of the Dark—a memoir from 1960—Hitch recalled the moment when, as a young child, he first felt terror. Later, while devouring the dark stories of Edgar Allan Poe, he learned how to turn dread into delight. It's such a moving piece—and the gravitational center for our series on Hitch and Surrealism—that I tapped actor Leo Daedalus to read it for this short film.