Hitchcock (2012)
w- John J McLaughlin
dp- Jeff Cronenweth
d-Sacha Gervasi"In a hundred year's time, my dear, it'll all just be cornflakes in a can" - or so said Alfred Hitchcock when asked about the penchant for film buffs to take his pictures so seriously. I doubt if the master himself would have understood the longevity or popularity of some of his pictures. When asked once about "Rebecca"(1940) Hitch himself commented "It's held up quite well you know. ...I don't know why."
50-odd years after the release of "Psycho", Director Sacha Gervasi has fashioned a film biography of sorts about Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins), and has used that film as the centerpiece around which the story unfolds. I don't know if there was ever really enough storytelling material there to make a compelling hour and a half plus change viewing for an average audience. Hitch couldn't get backing for "Psycho" because nobody in town thought a horror film would be accepted by an adult audience. Only Paramount President Barney Balaban, to whom Hitchcock still was contractually bound for one more picture, would agree only to DISTRIBUTE the film, and only if Hitchcock financed it all himself. I highlight distribute because I'm going to make a point about that later. So Hitchcock mortgaged the house and used his television unit resources (cameras, equipment and crew) at Revue studios on the Universal lot and made the picture.
He was right and the powers that be were wrong and the rest is cinema history. What this film oddly centers on is a supposed tension in Hitch's marriage to Alma(Helen Mirren). Alma Reville, along with Joan Harrison, was the main guiding force behind Hitchcock's success. Reville and Harrison both scripted, and later script doctored, virtually every picture Hitch made. Hitch and Alma had a strong working marriage. Whatever else was going on they kept private. The British are not known for blathering about their private problems, and the Hitchcocks were certainly no exception. That presents a major problem with this film. The filmmakers here decided to spice up their story by ginning up this supposed flirtatious relationship with a scriptwriter named Whitfield Cook. Cook had scripted "Strangers on a Train" and adapted "Stage Fright" for Hitch, and he and Alma were friends and worked together on those films. It is unknown and unheard of by me if they ever worked again. I'll give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and go along with that. I will not go along with the silly notion that it blew up into some dumb soap opera, with Hitchcock running around like a fool, witnessed by God, Peggy Robertson(Toni Collet), and everyone.
Hitchcock, in this film, is also portrayed as being a slobby glutton. Well of course he was, because ...well you know... he was fat. So NATURALLY he MUST have spent nights at home furtively scarfing down tins of pate, and slurping down glasses of brandy and whiskey at all times. Sure. Yeah. Righty-ho.
Another major theme in this film is the influence that the source material had with Hitchcock, and how it subsequently haunted and taunted him. "Psycho" was written By Robert Bloch and was based on the story of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin serial killer who chopped up his female victims. In this film, Gein is given far too much screen time as a ghostly taunter of Hitchcock, representing the director's id. In reality, as anyone who has any knowlege about Hitchcock's M.O. knows, he never gave two shits about source material. He'd buy a story, chuck out everything but the title, and do it his way, never giving the original author or story a second thought*. That he'd go all potty over the Gein story was just grating and dumb.
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| L to R - Jessica Beil as Peggy Robertson, Anthony Hopkins as you-know-who, and Helen Mirren as Alma |
Now I want to talk a little about the performances, because here is where the picture really delivers and makes up a lot of lost ground. Both Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren are superb as Hitch and Alma, respectively. Anthony Hopkins has always had such a striking, unique screen presence, and his speech patterns and voice are as strikingly his own as Hitchcock's was. So for the first five minutes, it's a little hard to get him as Hitch, with both voices fighting for recognizance. But after those first five minutes, Hopkins draws you into his performance, making it and Hitch his own. The scenes between him and Mirren are superb, until, of course, it goes all "General Hospital" on us with the soap opera histrionics. Also good was Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh. the scenes between her and Jessica Beil were interesting, delving into the weird hate-obsession Hitch had for Vera Miles. He never forgave her for getting pregnant on "Vertigo" and forcing him to take Kim Novak. He was very, very vindictive if you got on his bad side. This aspect is touched upon here. One guesses that the other Hitchcock bio, "The Girl" , also this year on HBO, takes this a lot further.
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| Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock. Note the Paramount scenery in the background. |
It's an interesting thing about Danny Huston, who Plays Whit Cook. As he ages, he's becoming his father, John Huston, more and more and creepily more. Creepy.
Surprisingly stupid was the depiction of Tony Perkins, in his audition for "Psycho" as being in "real life" just as nervous, awkward and creepy as Norman Bates. Did these people research nothing? Perkins was about as much like Norman Bates in mannerisms and temperment as the Pope is to Lady GaGa.
There are so many historical detail inaccuracies here that I'll only mention a few that really bothered me. Mainly, the biggest totally unnecessary and easily avoidable gaffe was in portraying "Psycho" very specifically as being shot on the Paramount lot. As noted above, Paramount distributed the film ONLY, and all photography and office work was done out of Hitchs TV facilities at Universal studios(Shamley productions). The films most famous set- the California gothic-inspired house on the hill and the motel exterior are still standing at Universal studios, as any brainless tourist who rides that god-awful tramride can tell you.
Also such careless inattention to historical detail, such as getting the police cruiser wrong, and the rear-projection plates wrong and the dialog wrong and even the goddamned shower head wrong. I mean...how do you get that wrong, for chrissakes?
So there's a lot else, but I want to at least try not to look like a total anal freak, and instead I'll just ask the kind reader - what the hell do I know about anything anyway? Well I know this film is getting from me........
I almost gave it three for the lead performances, but I ain't gonna.
* "Rebecca" was an exception. It was produced by Miss David O. Selznick, who made Mommie dearest Joan Crawford look like Carol Brady in comparison. He was a total crazy control freak who was COMMITTED to faithfully following the Daphne DuMaurier short story, as he did on his previous success, "Gone with the Wind". He was so right in doing so. Had Hitchcock had his way, he would have set the whole film on a train. True story.
