Just over a month after the BBC TV movie The Girl covered very similar ground, famous director Alfred Hitchcock gets a second film made about him, this time a big budget version starring Anthony Hopkins with Helen Mirren as his long suffering but devoted wife Alma Reville. While The Girl concerned his obsession with latest blonde Tippi Hedron during filming The Birds, Hitchcock takes us a film back to the director's most famous gamble which led to his greatest success: the making of Psycho. Hitchcock the movie is a well made and enjoyable film that, bar the occasional lull, coasts along agreeably, showing us the darker side of the great man while not crucifying him as The Girl did. The film also suggests that, terrible as he was to live with, the marriage of Hitch and Alma worked in its own unconventional way.
Coming off the back of North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock is 60 and feeling jaded. Asked to recreate past glories he instead chooses to make a low budget horror film based on the notorious serial murders of Ed Gein, fictionalised in Robert Bloch's novel Psycho. Hitch's team, including his agent, Alma and secretary Peggy (Toni Collette), are less than convinced but back the big man, Alma going so far as to allow their house to be remortgaged to fund the film when the studio refuse. We then follow Hitch assembling his cast, including Scarlett Johansson, looking like a Fifties dream as Janet Leigh, James D'Arcy as Antony Perkins and Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, and getting the film made. However, his complex relationship with wife Alma is increasingly strained, especially once she starts working on a treatment with handsome writer Whit (Danny Huston). Hitch starts drinking too much and imagining Gein is visiting him (played by the reliably creepy Michael Wincott). Can the great director complete his masterpiece?
Hitchcock recreates the end of the 1950s with style, from the costumes and hairstyles to the big cars and period houses. This disappeared world is also shown by the soundstages full of smoke from the crew puffing away on endless cigarettes and the director being able to slam the door in the face of the studio executive. There are lovely little recreations of moments from Psycho, from the famous opening love scene and that iconic shower to Johansson in a car, projector screen behind while a couple of burly blokes rock the car back and forth to give the illusion of movement. While this is a world of cramped sets and smoky offices, the film is not afraid to get out and about, from a picturesque highway by the sea to the Hitchcocks' garden and very inviting looking swimming pool.
As Hitchcock, Hopkins does a credible job, less an impersonation than an appropriation of some of his traits and mannerisms. He looks the part but, like Jones before him, fails to have that twinkle that Hitch always had. Try as he might, Hopkins as an actor has always lacked warmth and has eyes as cold as ice - great for playing Hannibal Lector but less successful in conveying the larger than life avuncular TV persona that made him the world's most recognisable and loved director. Where this film trumps The Girl is in showing how hungry Hitch still was as a director and how he loved making films; the scene towards the end where he skips about in glee outside the theatre listening to the screams of the audience and conducting in time to Hermann's score as the shower scene unfolds is a virtuoso moment and lets us know how important it was for Hitch to affect his audience.
Sacha Gervasi directs with skill and economy but can't always keep a tight focus on proceedings with one too many subplots jostling for attention. Are we watching a film about the making of an iconic film or a film about the codependent marriage of Mr and Mrs Hitchcock? Instead of adding to each other, the two threads end up taking away from the other, leaving us with what feels like three quarters of two movies. As Alma, Mirren conveys a steely resolve that more than makes her a match for her famous husband and which states quite plainly that Alma was as responsible for Hitchcock's success as the big man himself. Even at her advanced age, Mirren still projects an easy sexiness and is totally captivating. The subplot of her gradual fascination with Whit feels more like soap opera than anything else but Mirren's skill keeps it from seeming trite. The film, with its depiction of Hitch spying on women and mooning over black and white pictures of Grace Kelly paint us a picture of a difficult marriage but this is offset by Alma's devotion to his art and to Hitch's inability to function without her. It may be tough going but the film presents them very much as a team, however dysfunctional. Alma matters.
This isn't the definitive story of one of our most famous directors but it is an enjoyable evocation of a time long past. While it tries to cram too much in, leading to a lack of depth at times, the film is a highly entertaining couple of hours and will have you dashing home to stick Psycho onto your player.
GK Rating: **** The Blog of Delights
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