Behind Every Great Man is a Great Woman: A Review of the Movie "Hitchcock"

The year 2012 was not kind to the legacy of Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock.  Last year saw the release of not one, but two biographical films which both paint the most famous director of all time in less than flattering colors.  The Girl, a made-for-TV movie originally shown on HBO and written by Gwyneth Hughes, depicts Hitch as a sadist, a sexual predator (of the harassment vein, not as an all-out rapist, but still not exactly an admirable quality), and as a more or less villainous figure.

Hitchcock, released to theaters and written by John J. McLaughlin, has more sympathy for its subject but will still tarnish his reputation as it depicts Hitch as the public figure, but his wife and sometime collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) as the true genius behind the scenes.  The film is based on Stephen Rebello's non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, a book I've read, but so long ago that I don't remember much about it.  For example, I don't recall if Rebello depicted Hitchcock as amarous, paranoid, or coldly insensitive as he is sometimes presented here.  I'm 99% sure, however, that the idea that Hitchcock often imagined (or possibly even hallucinated?) confiding in Ed Gein -- the real-life serial killer who inspired the invention of Psycho's Norman Bates -- is a complete invention on the part of screenwriter John McLaughlin.

Despite the title of the source material, this movie is as much about Alma as it is about Hitch.  The movie more or less equally divides its attention among three distinct but closely related storylines.  The first is Mr. Hitchcock's attempts to make Psycho, a narrative that begins at the premiere of his previous film (North by Northwest), continues along every stage of development, production, and marketing the movie, and ends at the premiere of Psycho itself.  The second storyline involves Hitch's sometimes rocky relationship with Alma, and the third involves Alma's relationship with the writer Whitfield "Wit" Cook (played by Danny Huston with a sort of sleazy charm), whose friendship with Alma leads to a professional collaboration, and also threatens to become an affair.

All three storylines are entertaining, both in their content and presentation.  I've never heard of screenwriter McLaughlin before this film, but here he definitely earns my respect.

Still, one thing does bother me . . . 

The story is set in motion when Whitfield asks Alma to try to convince Hitch to use one of Wit's own books as the basis of Hitch's next film.  Even before Hitch begins to suspect Wit of having an affair with his wife, the great director clearly has no respect for Wit as a writer, so he begins a search for a more worthy inspiration, and settles on Robert Bloch's novel Psycho.  Literally every single person Hitch knows -- including Alma -- opposes his choice, but fortunately for both his own career and for the history of film, Hitch stands firm.

It should be noted that, until the movie is almost over, Hitch's stubborn determination to make Psycho in the first place is the last time that Hitchcock will depict Mr. Hitchcock as a man of independent inspiration, and Alma's opinion that the book isn't worth his time is the very last time she will be depicted as being wrong about anything in any way.  In all other regards, Alma is depicted as the true genius behind the scenes, including coming up with the idea to kill off the leading lady early in the film, re-writing the entire script, directing the film herself for a couple of days when Hitchcock falls ill, and even being the one to insist on Bernard Herrmann's iconic "eek eek eek!" music score when Hitch argues that there shouldn't be music in the shower scene at all.  Indeed, Hitchcock seems to argue that not just some, but all of the reasons why Psycho is an effective movie is because of Alma, not because of Alfred.  "I'm useless without you," Hitchcock explicitly says to his wife at one point, as if screenwriter McLaughlin was afraid we might have somehow missed the point that this movie has been making almost since the film began.

I don't remember Mr. Rebello's book well enough to tell you whether all of this is invention on McLaughlin's part, or based on the facts as presented by Mr. Rebello, but I can observe the sum total of all of this is that, in McLaughlin's attempts to emphasize how important Alma was to Hitchcock, he goes too far, and ends up completely robbing Hitch himself of anything resembling artistic inspiration or independent thought -- and I feel that this message, whether it's intended or not, is a gross injustice toward the Master of Suspense.

As a sort of consolation prize, the final act does depict Alfred Hitchcock as a master of marketing, as Paramount Pictures more or less sets out to sabotage Psycho's success, and Hitchcock responds with a series of brilliant gimmicks and ideas to turn the extremely under-marketed film into the biggest box office success of his career.

Now for the bottom line:  Yes, the movie's message made me uneasy.  But the thing is, the movie also happens to be very entertaining.  Even if the script robs Hitchcock of his artistic genius, it retains for him his brilliantly dry wit -- and, of course, makes Alma his equally clever peer in adroit banter.  And the cast is fun, made up of a lot of talented character actors.  True, Jessica Biel may be blandly miscast as Vera Miles, but Anthony Hopkins is simply brilliant as Alfred Hitchcock, Kurtwood Smith and Michael Stuhlbarg are highly amusing in small but key supporting roles, and James D'Arcy is so perfect as Anthony Perkins that at first I thought it was footage of the real Perkins spliced in, Forrest Gump style.  (And as for enjoying the cast, see if you can identify the grown-up 80s child star in a small but important cameo).  All in all I'd have to say that despite my disapproval of the film's message regarding its main character, Hitchcock is a winning film, definitely worth your time.