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Review - Hitchcock (2012)
Hitchcock is a movie that is about the making of Psycho in 1960. Its stars Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, and enjoys strong performances throughout. When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award. Hitchcock's speech went :"I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville". Although the impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock by Anthony Hopkins is an astonishing effort, the acting performance that impresses the most, on reflection, is Helen Mirren's Alma Reville. Mirren reminds us of her skill as an actress in a tricky scene where she confronts Hitchcock, who has suspected her of having an affair, and feels she has not supported him sufficiently well on set, as he struggles to make Psycho. This is not meant to denigrade Hopkins' effort - I doubt anyone could have done a better job, except perhaps Hitchcock himself.
Hitchcock is tied to Paramount studios to make one final film. They do not want this to be Psycho, preferring another North By North West, but a determined Hitchcock enlists the support of his wife and they mortgage the house to make it as an independent feature, doing a deal with Paramount for distribution rights only. The collabarative process between the two is at the heart of the movie but when Alma Reville embarks on a simultaneous writing project with a debonair associate, Hitchcock becomes jealous, and feels betrayed. The degree of credit that Alma Reville was entitled to is a question of interpretation, but the movie seemed to hit the right notes. Hitchcock needed Reville to help him deliver the project, but the choice of project was his. Reville would help with the casting, but Hitchcock was in charge of the camera.
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Scarlett Johannsson plays Janet Leigh, who may be a Hitchcock blonde, but by this time she was an actress with a highly respected professional reputation in Hollywood - with a back catalogue that included work with Orson Welles (Touch of Evil), James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Jerry Lewis and Lassie. Director Sacha Gervasi wisely treads carefully when it comes to the on set relations between Hitchcock and Leigh, and whilst this rings true it doesn't give Johansson much of a tricky acting assignment, and she coasts through, the exception being when Hitchcock ups the ante during filming of the famous shower scene.
An additional plot line is added, with the introduction of gravelly voiced perennial bad guy Michael Wincott as a ghostly Ed Gein, who haunts Hitchcock in his dreams, and daydreams, during the making of Psycho. Ed Gein was the inspiration for Robert Bloch when writing Psycho, and is America's most notorious serial killer. This was perhaps a distraction, but no more than Alma Reville's writing escapades at her playboy friend's beach house, and anyway it is always a pleasure to see Wincott on screen, every since his tour de force in 1994's The Crow). These distractions meant we didn't see enough scenes from the set of Psycho. This was a pity because there was a second astonishing impersonation in this movie as actor James D'Arcy brilliantly plays Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates in Psycho) - an opportunity largely wasted.
The movie has an excellent finale with Hitchcock turning the tables on the censors, then on Paramount when they decide to release the film in only 2 cinemas. His subsequent campaign to use the biggest influence on box office success - word of mouth - leads to a delightful scene of Hitchcock in the cinema foyer, listening to the screams and horror of the audience as his leading lady is unceremoniously killed off just thirty minutes into the film. Hitchcock is book-ended by Hopkins talking to camera, which is how the 1960s TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents always began and ended, and we hear the same musical theme, before, finally, we are reminded that his next movie would be The Birds.
8/10 Well Executed
Review written by John Franklin : February 2013
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