Review: ‘Hitchcock’

Alfred Hitchcock is an icon of cinema. His films remain classics and as a filmmaker, Hitch had the uncanny ability to find exactly what cinema audiences look for.

Unfortunately, this film doesn’t do the man or his work justice.

The film focuses on a troubled period in the director’s life. After producing such box office gold as North By Northwest , the studio is eagerly awaiting his next blockbuster. Unable to come up with anything even remotely interesting, Hitch becomes obsessed by a book by Robert Bloch outlining the heinous murders of Ed Gein. He becomes so certain that this will be his next masterpiece, he stands up to his agent and the studio head and finances the project himself, risking the house he and his wife love.

So far, so interesting. But from here the film skews away from the making of Psycho to settle its eye on Alma, the woman behind the great man. If we were to believe the line this film takes, she was instrumental in the making of the film and even took over as director for several days while Hitch was ill. According to the film, the marriage was troubled at this point and Alma, searching for a project of her own, snuck away to work on a script with Whitfield Cook – something not to Hitch’s liking.

The acting is good. Mirren gives Alma an intelligence and warmth as well as the strength to stand up to her larger-than-life husband. As Hitch, Hopkins is surprisingly good given the large amount of make-up and prosthetics. His Hitch is as enigmatic and complex as I believe the man himself probably was.

But in this case, the strength of the acting just highlights the paucity of the premise. I wanted to like this film more, but by shifting the focus from Hitch and the making of his masterpiece to Alma, the film becomes more a women’s picture than a biography. And much of what’s shown is speculative, with little grounding in fact. Perhaps the filmmakers were hamstrung by the studio’s refusal to let them use or reproduce any footage from Psycho. Perhaps the studio wanted a movie that wouldn’t alienate their female audience, with box office $ in mind. Whatever the case, Hitchcock isn’t the film I wanted it to be.

Save your $$$ and go rent Psycho instead.

5/10