Hitchcock

Hitchcock is yet another film that tells a behind-the-scenes tale of the golden years of Hollywood, like 2011's My Week with Marilyn or Peter Bogdanovitch’s 2001 The Cat’s Meow, but while it's better then those pictures, it doesn’t reach the level of, say, Tim Burton’s 1994 Ed Wood.  Hitchcock comes on the heels of another Hitchcock movie, an HBO production called The Girl with Toby Jones as the Master of Suspense. Whereas The Girl aimed to expose all of the sad, bleak and despicable aspects of this legendary figure, Hitchcock aims to do just the opposite, presenting the more familiar charming and cuddly persona. But though Jones’s performance is superior to Hopkins’s, Hitchcock is the more successful movie.  Neither film opens a window into the man’s soul, but Hitchcock works as halfway-decent entertainment.

What makes the movie work is that it doesn't take itself very seriously. The film concerns itself with the making ofPsycho as well as Hitchcock's relationship with his wife, Alma Revel.  But it makes no attempt to pass itself off at the “true story” of how the iconic film was made, or to deeply examine his complex marital relationship. Rather, we get the simplest possible version of how Psycho came about and a slightly campy historical love story that attempts to elevate the role Revel played in Hitchcock’s work to its rightful place in popular understanding.

Nothing in the film feels at all “real,” but that prevents the film from getting bogged down in bio--pic detail. The film amusingly begins like the opening to an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Hopkins introduces the film to us in character, and the film maintains its light tone from there.  No amount of prosthetics can suffice to make Hopkins look anything like Alfred Hitchcock, and I can't imagine the real Revel was anything like Helen Mirren character here. But Hopkins doing his best Hitchcock impression and lumbering around in a fat suit, while Mirren plays the feisty and intelligent role that is her standard fare these days is pretty enjoyably anyway.  The rest of the cast is good too, especially Toni Collett as Hitch’s long time secretary Peggy, and only Scarlet Johansson, as Janet Leigh, feels out of her depth. Johansson captures nothing about Leigh other than her warm professionalism, but that is to the script's credit.

The film falters often, especially when it employs the tired bio-pic device of having its subject imagine conversations with a dead person - in this case no less than Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired Psycho's Norman Bates.  Besides this terrible choice and the dismayingly unimaginative title, the film is fine, especially for those who know nothing about Hitchcock and his unique thirty-year-collaboration with his wife. I’m sure their partnership was nothing like the movie depicts it, but I believe that the filmmakers probably got the spirit right.