‘I will never find a Hitchcock blonde as beautiful as you...’
Alfred Hitchcock is a giant in cinematic terms and his substantial oeuvre still looms large across the twin disciplines of film analysis and criticism. A biopic of Hitch’s life would be impossible. He simply lived too much life to fit into one feature-length film. Instead, director Sacha Gervasi presents us with Hitchcock – a movie about the making of Psycho…
Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) is licking his wounds following the commercial failure of Vertigo. Rather than pick a safe option for his next movie, the Master of Suspense doubles down on creating something that nobody has seen before. Inspired by the ghoulish case of Ed Gein, Hitchcock chooses an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s controversial novel Psycho. After casting Janet Leigh – the latest in a long line of ‘Hitchcock’s Blondes’ – Hitch finds himself in conflict with his supportive wife Alma (Helen Mirren).
I’m not sure how historically accurate Hitchcock is but it is undoubtedly a lot of fun. Hopkins has a blast capturing his subject’s many idiosyncracies and a supporting cast featuring Michael Stuhlbarg, Danny Huston and Toni Collette ensures that the remarkable story of the creation of Psycho is told with style and panache. To his credit, Gervasi, working from a screenplay by John J. Mclaughlin and Stephen Rebello, never shies away from the darker side of Hitch’s personality – his various obsessions, his shoddy treatment of his leading ladies, his tendency for voyeurism – and this helps to shed some light on a figure who was as complex as he was enigmatic.
Hitchcock isn’t energetic and bombastic enough to entice those without an interest in film history but for fans of Hitch and his work, there is certainly enough here to justify a viewing even if it never comes close to matching the cinematic achievements of the man himself.