Who Was Hitch? - WSJ.com

Losing the election has put the Wall Street Journal in an introspective mood.  The editors most definitely have vertigo!

Who Was Hitch? - WSJ.com



From the article:

At last, the popular image of Alfred Hitchcock as a genial, whimsical entertainer, a brilliant filmmaker and a dry, droll tease, has fallen away.
A modest HBO film, "The Girl," which debuted in October, and a haunting performance by Toby Jones as Hitch has apparently collapsed the legend.
And later this month a theatrical movie arrives, "Hitchcock," with Anthony Hopkins as the master and Helen Mirren as his wife, Alma, who had to watch his infatuation with so many actresses.
Hitch is now revealed as a troubled man.
How troubled? Well, in the league of Norman Bates (we all know Norman), of Bruno Anthony in "Strangers on a Train," of Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca" and of Scottie (James Stewart), the victim detective and desperate lover in "Vertigo," where he has such a dread of heights that he lives in San Francisco. Did no one notice this helpless, contradictory attachment before?
In the 1960s and '70s, the great age of film appreciation in America, the idea began to gain traction that Hitch was not just a poker-faced magician who loved to scare us, but maybe a genius. He had company then, but it's notable that so many other director heroes of that age have slipped from widespread recognition: Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Vincente Minnelli, Otto Preminger, even Billy Wilder. Most of your kids don't know those names. But Hitchcock is as familiar as ever, one of those names that stand for the entirety of cinema, like Chaplin, Garbo, "Gone With the Wind," Disney and Monroe.