My Name is Alfred Hitch­cock review – deep film analy­sis with a twist

The writer, crit­ic, cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an, hik­ing enthu­si­ast and all-round intre­pid man of let­ters Mark Cousins does him­self a dis­ser­vice by min­imis­ing his own redoubtable pres­ence from his new film, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock.

This archive clip-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary com­pris­es Cousins’ own informed and poet­ic pos­tu­la­tions on the inner-work­ings of the Hitch­cock cor­pus, as he heads on a jol­ly, the­mat­i­cal­ly-inclined ram­ble through one of the great artis­tic lega­cies of the 20^th century.

Yet, instead of plac­ing him­self front and cen­tre, trad­ing on the fire­side com­fort of his angu­lar into­na­tion and impas­sioned mode of inquiry, we instead have voice impres­sion­ist Alis­tair McGowan giv­ing us his best Hitch, a jow­ly East Lon­don drawl that goes some way to emu­late the voice of the Mas­ter of Sus­pense, but not far enough to allow a view­er to sus­pend all disbelief.

It’s a cheeky lit­tle con­ceit, and one that’s exe­cut­ed as well as it per­haps could’ve been, but it’s also a baf­fling one, and it’s nev­er real­ly made clear what its func­tion is. If any­thing, it serves to make the view­er sec­ond guess the verac­i­ty and sin­cer­i­ty of the obser­va­tions, as too much time is spent think­ing, ​“Did Hitch­cock real­ly say that?”, ​“Did he real­ly think that?” ​“Is this all a bit of a joke?” The first per­son deliv­ery is also strange­ly dis­ori­ent­ing. Realise this sounds a bit like the Fun Police knock­ing, but there we are…

It’s all done with a nod and a wink and a wee slurp of chilled Le Mon­tra­chet, but where the con­tent of the nar­ra­tion cap­tures Cousins’ prowess as one of the fore­most mod­ern inquisi­tors of art and film, it nev­er chimes with the acer­bic tone of the real Hitch­cock as seen in count­less TV intros, movie trail­ers, awards speech­es, adver­tise­ments and François Truffaut’s sem­i­nal inter­view vol­ume with the film­mak­er. The sound of the voice is there, the self-lac­er­at­ing tone and wit, maybe less so.

My Name is Alfred Hitch­cock does serve one key func­tion, though, and it’s as a no-non­sense cat­a­lyst to go and either watch or re-watch the movies them­selves. And ever the equal-oppor­tu­ni­ties crit­ic, Cousins does well to not place all his chips on Psy­cho, Ver­ti­go and Rear Win­dow, giv­ing deep thought to the ear­ly British films like Mur­der! and the lit­tle-seen Juno and the Pay­cock, as well as his less­er-loved twi­light-era efforts, Topaz and Fam­i­ly Plot.