Hitchcock | Little White Lies

Hitch­cock

07 Feb 2013 / Released: 08 Feb 2013

Smiling woman with blonde curled hair in car with elderly man.
Smiling woman with blonde curled hair in car with elderly man.
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Anticipation.

Another biopic that’s all filler and no killer?

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Enjoyment.

Hitchcock’s darker impulses are repressed in favour of timid melodrama and historical revisionism.

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In Retrospect.

Unlike Hitchcock’s work, it fades from memory almost immediately.

The Mas­ter of Sus­pense gets his very own glib and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly-stilt­ed Wiki-biopic.

Ser­i­al killer Ed Gein (Michael Win­cott) kicks off Sacha Gervasi’s Hitch­cock with a resound­ing state­ment: he uses a shov­el to pum­mel his first vic­tim to death. When the cam­era pans to the right, it reveals a slight­ly revolt­ed yet deeply intrigued Alfred Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) watch­ing the heinous action unfold from a mere few feet away.

It imme­di­ate­ly con­nects the mass mur­der­er and icon­ic film­mak­er in a dark­ly com­ic way. If only the rest of Hitch­cock were as inter­est­ed in the mor­bid rela­tion­ship between true crime and art as this spa­tial­ly dynam­ic time cap­sule. His­to­ry tells us that Gein com­mit­ted more mur­ders – many more, in fact – and his hor­rif­ic exploits would inspire Robert Bloch’s 1959 nov­el Psy­cho’ and Hitchcock’s clas­sic 1960 film of the same name.

But in a strange and some­what dis­turb­ing way, Gein is also the jet-black soul of Gervasi’s oth­er­wise mid­dling biopic, appear­ing through­out like a ghost­ly men­tor to pro­mote Hitchcock’s dark­est urges and sadis­tic ten­den­cies. Their sur­re­al scenes togeth­er crack­le with inten­si­ty and uncer­tain­ty, prov­ing that Hitchcock’s artis­tic arro­gance and exte­ri­or con­fi­dence are mere­ly moments away from disintegration.

Much of Hitch­cock fol­lows the embat­tled film­mak­er as he attempts to over­come these demons while cir­cum­vent­ing Hol­ly­wood gos­sip and eco­nom­ic block­ades to fund, cast, direct and edit Psy­cho. Deemed too old to tack­le such seedy mate­r­i­al by var­i­ous pun­dits, Hitch­cock revolts against con­ven­tion and self-finances the film, much to the cha­grin of Para­mount Pic­tures, who wants him to tack­le some­thing safer and ensure a return on investment.

Once on set, the film por­trays Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) as a sexy, classy and artis­ti­cal­ly game actress who sur­vives Hitchcock’s intense direct­ing process. Antho­ny Perkins (James D’Arcy) comes across as a wide-eyed sponge will­ing to soak up Hitch’s par­tic­u­lar brand of crazy in order to inhab­it the char­ac­ter of Nor­man Bates. But Hitch­cock is not about film direct­ing or act­ing or even the ebbs and flows of the artis­tic process.

The tumult and unpre­dictabil­i­ty inher­ent to the film pro­duc­tion is often pushed to the back­ground in favor of melo­dra­ma con­cern­ing Hitchcock’s fal­ter­ing rela­tion­ship with his long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor and wife Alma Reville (Helen Mir­ren). Seeds of doubt and jeal­ousy flower on both sides, espe­cial­ly when a charm­ing nov­el­ist (Dan­ny Hus­ton) courts Alma to help edit his lat­est book.

This fric­tion sets the stage for ver­bal stand­offs a‑plenty that col­lec­tive­ly hint at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bru­tal vio­lence, either through shades of voyeurism or crescen­dos of music used to con­vey psy­cho­log­i­cal fragili­ty. It’s not sur­pris­ing that Gein often mate­ri­alis­es when Hitch reach­es the pin­na­cle of his rage.

Still, Ger­vasi – a direc­tor best known for his 2008 doc­u­men­tary Anvil! The Sto­ry Of Anvil – seems entire­ly over­whelmed by the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al weight of his sub­ject, unsure of which tone to embrace. There are plen­ty of clever bits about Hitch­cock and film his­to­ry in gen­er­al (Ver­ti­go and Win­ches­ter 73 are both ref­er­enced as pejo­ra­tives), but the film lacks any cohe­sive visu­al style or dynam­ic audio design to bring it all together.

The line between san­i­ty and insan­i­ty, life and death, Hitch­cock and Gein may be a thin red one, but the film itself nev­er has the ambi­tion or desire to exam­ine why.

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