Thoughts on HITCHCOCK and a stab at that bird, The Girl

Hitchcock

Fox Searchlight
Directed by Sacha Gervasi

Hitchcock, the new film directed by Sacha Gervasi  and starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitch ("hold the cock") and Helen Mirren as his Alma (nee Reville) is a film that can't help but disappoint.  It is a movie that uses the making of the director's legendary Psycho as the backdrop to explore the remarkable pairing of Alma and Alfred. And that's a pretty high mark to aim for.  While the film disappoints, it is nonetheless often good and sometimes very, very good.


But, it's a smart move as few people know Alma's name, let alone understand her importance to Hitch and film history, while most will have heard of Psycho.  Yet for all Freudian grist that Psycho provides the film's mill, the film could have been based on just about any Hitchcock movie, most certainly from late Hitch.

And this seems to be post-modern in Hitchcock--his late sometimes disturbing sometimes disappointing later films.

And Psycho was unequivocally the turning point in the director's incredible career.

Anthony Hopkins does a fine job as Hitchcock.  Helen Mirren at first screening does a better job but she has an easier task--she has to breathe life into the mystery smallish woman who bore the weight of being Mrs Hitchcock for more then fifty years in the end. Hopkins not only become Hitch, but he has to over come the varying Hitchcock's that most of us of a certain age have lurking around our subconscious. He is successfull and I will be honest, there were two distinct moments that Hopkin's Hitch moved to tears.

Helen Mirren's Alma was a bit harder for me to swallow.  She's given a rather thankless job of being unknown to most of the audience but also, according to the film, seriously considering an affair with Whitfield Cook (brilliantly turned by Danny Huston).  The possible affair, like the making of Psycho, are something of MacGuffin's--a device to serve the plot and the character needs. 

Like Psycho, the film gets away with the unrealistic Cook proposition but cutting it close but now allowing any real penetration.  That said, it doesn't say much about Alma, who in reality was smart, vivacious, a genius editor and writer but extraordinarily loyal to Hitchcock.  She points out in the film a well known fact--that when Hitchcock began his career in the early twenties in London, she was his superior.  And that he would wait until he was hers to propose marriage.

The film plays its infidelities and infelicities off eventually as the fevered imaginings of the director.  And like the film we really never see get made, Hitchcock's finest moments are with Hopkins and the shower and the penultimate bravura moment with Hopkins reacting to the audience seeing the scene for the first time.  The latter is what Hopkins I will predict will give the actor and Oscar.  Hitchcock is suddenly unmasked by the pure joy he felt when in full control of story image and and knife to give us exactly the jolt we wanted.  This is how I will choose to remember this film:  the director feeling his power and freedom again.

The film's frame is that of the director's TV intros and outros.  It is an apt one, but it underscores some of the film's weaknesses as well. It does provide a haunting final walk out for the director.

I suspect that we will see more of Hitchcock over time.  This film based on Stephen Rebello's masterful Making of Psycho book is a grand first stab.



The Girl
HBO Films
Directed by Julian Jarrold

The less said here, the better.  The film intrigues like porn, and satisfies like porn--you're sorry and embarrassed any of it worked on you at all.  From its incongruous filming in South Africa to Toby Jones creepy Hitchcock.  As to Sienna Miller who portrays "Tippi", she was given nothing much to work with and had little more to offer.

It is an ugly after thought to Hitchcock as it choses the next Hitchcock, The Birds, as its backdrop.  The films are remarkably similar formulas, but The Girl is often silly and painful to watch.