Hitchcock is tongue-in-cheek, sentimental, revealing, and, overall, a production – which seems to be the way that Hitchcock himself would have wanted it, if the film is to be believed. Admittedly, here lies the rub. Is it accurate that the master of suspense routinely spoke with such a mesmerizing and dreary cadence, extended both his lips and gut forward and he stood mostly profile to gaze with his eyes down at his foil in conversation, even if he was the same height or shorter?
Or, is this the caricature that has been created by “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” – a fanciful bookend to the movie?
Director Sacha Gervasi frames Hitchcock’s life as if it were one of his movies. Like L.B. Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) in Rear Window, he is a voyeur, always peering through blinds. He’s also perverse like Norman Bates as he peers through various peepholes on film sets. The latter is often paralleled during the filming of Psycho – the primary focus of Hitchcock. Much like Norman Bates acts on his aggression, guilt, and transgressions, so too does Hitchcock as he slashes away at Vivien Leigh (Scarlett Johansson in the canonical shower scene. The thought of his wife, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), having an affair with another man is too much to take – despite his many infatuations and fantasized trysts with other women.
Alma is the all-too capable auteur, whose work on her husband’s scripts goes uncredited and unappreciated for most of the marriage / working career. Hitchcock dominates the industry, and his meticulous perfection goes unquestioned – even though it comes in part from Alma. It seems, in real life as well: as they garden, she organizes and works; he tries to escape for a drink. Though mutually beneficial to each other, Alma is often an accessory or a piece of furniture.
This dynamic and ensuing conflict sets up the largest irony in the presumed life of Hitchcock. For Psycho, a movie ripe with misogyny, wherein a psychotic man with a God complex both snuffs out and then provides life for his deceased mother, it takes a woman’s acumen and influence to revive the initially poorly received Psycho – at least by the studios. It seems that Alfred Hitchcock’s most popular film – though it came at the end of a nearly forty year career – almost never got off the ground until tweaks, suggestions, and edits were made by his betrothed.
And, this is the heart and soul of the film: the dynamic between the artist and the collaborator, the famous and the unnoticed, the husband and the wife. This is a bit antithetical to how we often think of Hitchcock. His egotism is famous, but his love of his wife is lesser known – often overshadowed by his obsession with female stars. Anthony Hopkins is often uncanny in his impersonation of Hitchcock. While the makeup to round out his jowls, at times, feels waxy, his mannerisms and cadence are consistent, consistently drawing us into the character.
Helen Mirren, characteristically also brings strength and vibrancy to Alma. Her voice is stern; her intelligence palatable but not condescending or pedantic. She does not wilt in the face of tragedy, and her soul overpowers her potential transgressions, making her desirably noble.
The downside of Hitchcock is the attempted paralleling of his life / psychosis with Ed Gein. While Gein is famous for his murders, his penchant for human-skin-pottery, and the way in which his crimes inspired a handful of cinema villains (Norman Bates, Leatherface, Buffalo Bill, among others), the connection is forced. I suppose in a sense that both Hitchcock at the end of his career and Gein in the morbid prime of his were seeking to preserve their existences: Hitchcock needed to perpetually reaffirm his value in Hollywood and Gein needed to alleviate his guilt and maintain stasis.
However, the suspense within Hitchcock and the weak assumptions that the auteur was on the precipice of insanity feel forced and unnecessary in a film that centers on the aforementioned irony – much more so than our belief that Hitchcock might have been closer to madness than genius.
