Review of Hitchcock (2012) by Harshith J — 19 Aug 2013

This isn't a definitive Alfred Hitchcock biopic, but that's actually a good thing - the guy had way too long a career to be condensed into a single movie. Rather, this movie smartly chooses to focus entirely on the making of Hitchcock's most famous film, Psycho. That's a much more reasonable project for a movie to tackle, and this one handles it about as well as you could expect. It's got a good sense of humor, and Anthony Hopkins's performance is terrific.

The movie opens with the opening of North by Northwest, which, despite its financial success, causes Hitchcock some worry when critics charge that he has lost his edge and is retreading earlier material. Determined to prove that he's still capable of new and interesting things, Hitchcock decides to adapt Psycho into a film. Along the way, he receives a great deal of help from his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), whom the movie argues was absolutely essential to Hitchcock's success. Scarlett Johansson appears as Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho.

This movie rests largely on the performances of Hopkins and Mirren, both of whom are absolutely up to the task. Hopkins clearly went through a lot of time in makeup, but it works - he really doesn't look like himself in this role, and while his features aren't quite as round as the real Hitchcock's, it's close enough that you forget it isn't him. It's nearly as immersive a performance in its way as Daniel Day-Lewis's in Lincoln, but didn't get Oscar consideration since it's in a deliberately slight sort of movie. Helen Mirren doesn't have to work through nearly as much audience preconception as Hopkins does, but she makes Alma as memorable a character as Hitchcock. The subplot about his jealous over her time spent with screenwriter Whitfield Cook feels contrived to add drama to the movie, and I'd be willing to bet it has little to no basis in real life. Still, though, the scenes that focus on Alfred and Alma's professional collaboration are good enough to make up for it.

The movie itself, directed by Sacha Gervasi, has a decent number of little nods and homages to actual Hitchcock films. Hitchcock is frequently portrayed as a voyeur, looking through windows and holes in walls like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window or Anthony Perkins in Psycho. We often see him standing in profile, looking exactly like the images of him made famous by his TV show. And the movie is bookended by direct-to-audience addresses just like he used to give for every episode of the TV show. It's all good fun, and indicative of the movie's approach, which doesn't take itself too seriously. The musical score is by Danny Elfman, and sometimes it's gloriously reminiscent of Elfman's scores for Tim Burton in the early 90s. But the most memorable moment of music is of course taken from the shower scene in Psycho, which this movie finds a great way to incorporate. As it happens, I'm about to take an entire semester-long course on Alfred Hitchcock, and this movie was a good way to get me into the mood to do so.