In this year that Hollywood is becoming increasingly fixated about retelling some historical biographical lives, I guess it’s no surprise to see Alfred Hitchcock on the list. Not once however, but twice. Although technically HBO’s ‘That Girl’ about Hitchcock’s obsession with Tippi Hedren starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller was a Brit made-for -TV film.
This new one starring Antony Hopkins sweltering in his ‘fat suit’ was ostensibly based on Stephen Rebello’s non-fiction book ‘Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho’ but somehow along the way it got turned into a fluffy drama that focused much more on the his marriage to his scriptwriter wife Alma Reveille.
Hitch as he likes to be called, (THE worse line in the movie is when he tells Janet Leigh to do just this and adds ‘just hold the cock’), has just had a big success with ‘North by Northwest’ and is looking for his next project to film. Goaded by some critics who have questioned if he is not too old to still be making movies, he looks for something really extraordinary just to prove that he is still at the top of his game.
He chooses ‘Psycho’ a novel based on the macabre crimes of a particularly nasty serial killer, but Alma is against the idea, and more importantly, so are the Studio Heads who refuse to finance it. So Hitch digs his heals in and still goes ahead by mortgaging his own house to underwrite the film.
I guess we will never know how much of this story is true, particularly when it comes to how he actually got on with his female stars as there were so many extreme rumours at the time. The Hitch we see portrayed here is a cultivated and successful director who is also just a dirty old man who lusted after his blond leading ladies by a spy hole he had made secreted into their dressing room walls.
Although they had a sexless marriage Hitch was paranoid about Alma having an affair, or even a man showing her too much attention. Apart from one solitary scene where Alma flares up at Hitch, she is remarkably complicit in going along with all of his excessive and selfish demands that simply was totally unconvincing given the fact that this elegant attractive woman had been clever enough to be his boss when they had first met.
The whole movie was lightweight but likable. Mr Hopkins gave an uncomfortable caricature for his performance, and I couldn’t decide if Helen Mirren was just totally miscast as Alma or that she just doesn’t play wives well in general. Especially obedient ones like this. And I am aghast to see that such a middling performance as this is actually collecting nominations for her acting! Maybe its part of the ‘Anybody But Keira Campaign’.
Scarlet Johansen was sweet and smiley as Janet Leigh. although she looked nothing like her…. but the three actors that really caught my eye were Jessica Biel who was an excellent Vera Miles, Michael Stuhlberg as Hitch’s persuasive agent Lee Wasserman, and James D’Arcy who was an uncanny Tony Perkins to a T.
For me there are two mysteries about this movie that I am really curious about. Firstly, why was it just an ‘ok’ movie when it had so much potential, and secondly how come Sacha Gervais an unknown director whose one claim to fame was the doc ‘The Story of Anvil’ was at the helm of such a big movie? He was clearly out of his depth here, but I guess IF it had been a success we would be applauding him, but as it is not, we can at least indulge in some finger pointing. Cant we?
So if there is nothing better at the Multiplex and you have a secret craving to see Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit, and Helen Mirren in a swim suit, then go look.
★★★★★★
Labels: dramatized reallife
