A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

The remark frames “a good film” in the language of ordinary audience economics rather than artistic theory. By tallying dinner, tickets, and a babysitter, Hitchcock reduces cinematic success to a practical test: did the evening feel worthwhile for a typical couple who had to spend money and effort to go out? The line implies that filmmaking is a service to viewers’ time and resources, and that satisfaction is measured in lived experience—entertainment value, emotional payoff, and the sense of having had a complete night out. It also reflects Hitchcock’s reputation as a director intensely attentive to audience reaction and to cinema as popular, mass entertainment.