Hitchcock is enjoyable enough, but it lacks the mystery, wit and provocation of its subject.
Alfred Hitchcock — the frumpy, priggish British director with the sadistic camera and unforgettable Cockney drawl — was a special man. He’s best known as an auteur, but he was just as important as a proponent of artistic change.
During a time of social unease — especially in the film industry — Hitchcock was able to find creative ways of shrouding his twisted worldview in cinematic flourishes. His work was exclusively implicit — he could not have legally pushed the envelope further than he did — but still gasp-worthy.
Sacha Gervasi’s (Anvil! The Story of Anvil) Hitchcock, the quasi-biopic that focuses on the making of Hitchcock’s iconic 1960 masterpiece, Psycho, is a baby slice of pop culture iconography, a gaunt quickie (only 98 minutes) on a meaty topic that skims the surface, pokes into the splendorous undergrowth yet barely spurs anything like fascination. Hitch was a mastermind of secrets, ulterior motives and voyeurism. He was — and his work is — enigmatic; the film we’re given, instead, is frothy and funny but hardly insightful.
Things pick up around the premiere of North by Northwest. Hitch (Anthony Hopkins, 360) has turned 60 and, consequently, is feeling apprehensive about his moviemaking future. He becomes infatuated with the story of Ed Gein, whose murderous streak in the 1950s became the inspiration for the Norman Bates character in Psycho the book and, in turn, Psycho the movie. The plot revolves around the director’s grueling battles with Paramount Pictures, which was appalled by the graphic nature of the source material, and then the production of the film itself.
The movie, though, is undercut by two rather tepid side stories, the first of which deals with Hitch’s growing obsession with Gein. Gervasi cleverly sticks Hitchcock in the action with Gein as he commits his heinous crimes, sometimes only as an observer, clad in a tuxedo and clutching a cup of tea — a la Alfred Hitchcock Presents — and sometimes with the ability to communicate directly with Gein. These sequences pop up now and again, especially in the beginning of the movie, but we really don’t learn why.
The other side-story deals with Alma Reville (Helen Mirren, The Door), Hitch’s wife, who, much to her husband’s chagrin, wanders off with writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston, Stolen) to work on a screenplay of her own. It’s a shame Gervasi had to waste time with this subplot; the finest sequences often center on loving bouts of bickering between only Hitch and Mrs. Hitch, their separate twin beds placed perfectly apart to suggest a relationship less about romance and more about mutual appreciation.
In the end, this appreciation is what shines through. We don’t learn anything particularly new about Hitchcock or Psycho — two juicy, albeit brief, appearances from Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers) and Jessica Biel (Total Recall) as the leading ladies in his film make things a bit more engrossing — but the chemistry between Hopkins and Mirren is enough to buoy the lightness and make things enjoyable enough.
diversionsdbk@gmail.com
