Hitchcock turned murder into an art form. His thrillers are the most thought-provoking and the ones that have been most extensively copied in cinema due to the inventiveness of their plots. Hitchcock enjoyed the title of "Master of Suspense" but he was skilled in many more aspects than that. He went to Hollywood in 1939 after a series of excellent, lively films shot in Britain. He found his footing slowly in the first decade there, but he made successes like Rebecca, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Notorious. From Strangers on a Train to Marnie, he did not make a single film that was less than impeccable. Rope, Psycho, and The Birds are masterpieces. Hitchcock was a genius manipulator, but behind that famous suave profile was also a nihilist, a Catholic moralist, a Freudian psychologist of sexuality, and an artist whose sensibilities were strongly attuned to the anxieties of his contemporary era. He was a much greater director than he thought.