Film: Hitchcock

Director: Sacha Gervasi
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: PG-13
Location/Format: Blu-ray
Grade: B-

This love letter to Alfred Hitchcock (and more so his wife Alma Reville) gets a lot of things right, a few things wrong, and adds some silly elements to Hitchcock persona while leaving out others entirely. 

First off, Anthony Hopkins tries hard, but his voice is so recognizable (and recognizably not Hitch's, given the director's own well-known vocal cadences from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv series), and he suffers under prosthetic make-up that works at times but often looks like a whole bunch of melting wax on his face. He gamely plays the master of suspense's droll sense of humor, but I think I preferred Toby Jones' darker and more complex take on the director in the HBO film The Girl. While Jones' Hitchcock is probably skewed negatively, Hopkins' Hitchcock is skewed, well, weirdly. The movie wants to credit him as a genius (which he was), and it nods to the psychosexual obsessions underneath his movies (he frequently stands at his blinds, voyeuristically watching the Hollywood starlets walk by), but then it goes to a kind of silly dark place, as the director has visions of/conversations with Ed Gein, the famous serial killer who inspired not only Norman Bates in Psycho but also Leatherface, Buffalo Bill, and probably even more film serial killers. It's a silly touch, as though Hitch's interest in psychology, voyeurism, and violence meant he was actually a little bit insane, and I found it off-putting. 

The movie gets some parts of the filming of Psycho right, while dramatizing others for effect. The shower scene, in particular, seems pretty different from the way most versions of the scene's filming have it happening, and Saul Bass (who is often credited with really inspiring that scene through his storyboards) is absent all together. 

I don't really have a problem with that, however, because though the movie uses the filming of Psycho as a jumping off point, it really wants to be a love story about the relationship between Hitch and his wife, Alma. She worked with him closely on all his films, and so director Gervasi explores who such a relationship could be strained by Hitchcock's public persona, his sexual focuses, and his ego. 

In that respect it does fine, I guess. I just think the interviews with Hitchcock that I've read make him a more interesting person than the film wants him to be. Too often this film is happy to boil him down to a sexually frustrated fat guy who may or may not be crazy. That's easier to show, but a lot less interesting, than real genius.

Alternate Film Title: "If This Movie Inspires More People to Actually Watch Psycho, I'm All For It"