‘Blondes make the best victims...’
It has long been accepted that Alfred Hitchcock was a problematic person. Despite some reports that he was the ‘perfect English gentleman’, the way that Hitch treated his string of blondes ranged from slightly creepy to downright deranged. Nobody had it worse than Tippi Hedren during the making of The Birds and Marnie. Julian Jarrold’s HBO movie The Girl charts Hedren’s initial casting through the turbulent shoot and Hitchcock’s ultimate infatuation…
Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) is a Swedish-American model looking to break into Hollywood. That opportunity presents itself when Hitchcock’s long-suffering wife Alma (Imelda Staunton) recommends Hedren for the part of Melanie Daniels in Hitchcock’s long-awaited Psycho follow-up The Birds.
The Girl follows that unusual Hollywood quirk of two competing biographies coming out in the same year. In the case of The Girl it played second fiddle to the Anthony Hopkins vehicle Hitchcock, and while it doesn’t have the star power of that movie, it is at least as compelling. Toby Jones leans into Hitch’s more unusual mannerisms including his love of sexually explicit limericks and inappropriate touching. Elsewhere, Miller is quietly excellent as the increasingly put-upon Hedren in a performance that requires her to act like she is acting – always a challenging skill.
The Girl was a TV movie and it feels like one, not because it is cheap looking or badly made but simply because it lacks the Hollywood bombast of the Hopkins version. As Hitch himself was very much a figure of light and shade, this film works as a great companion piece to the other biopic rather than the next best thing. Essential viewing for anyone fascinated with one of the most enigmatic and successful filmmakers of all time.