Movie Review: Hitchcock

When it comes to the master of suspense, there is only one name that comes to mind – Alfred Hitchcock. Mystery, murder, madness, and mayhem; all the things we’ve come to expect when popping in one of his classics. No matter if it’s something from his early days working in his United Kingdom homeland to his heydays in Hollywood. It’s also what was looked forward to during the ten-season television run of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I remember the first time I was actually introduced to the world of Hitchcock. In junior high I checked out a VHS copy of Psycho from the library, loving it so much I returned it far after it was supposed to have been and a new director obsession was born.

It’s actually quite surprising that there haven’t been more films made about the man himself. First we got the TV film The Girl with Toby Jones portraying Hitchcock during the production of The Birds, now we get Anthony Hopkins donning the fat suit breathing new life into the character Hitchcock was known to be. Helen Mirren plays his wife, Alma Reville, and it should be said up front that while the advertising may make director Sacha Gervasi’s biopic Hitchcock look like the making of Psycho itself, screenwriter John J. McLaughlin (Black Swan) has adapted Stephen Rebello’s biography Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho into a loving tribute highlighting a love story at its core between the married couple and the personal toll it took on their marriage during production.

With a most fitting yet surprising Alfred Hitchcock Presents-styled opening, Hitchcock shows the trials and tribulations at home and on the studio lots after the huge success of North by Northwest. Paramount Pictures wants to play things safe, but Alfred knows there’s more to himself than becoming pigeonholed. He’s had enough of spy thrillers and the like until his production assistant, Peggy Robertson (Toni Collette), hands him a copy of Psycho, the new book by Robert Bloch. Ol’ Hitch is instantly mesmerized by the novel and becomes bound and determined to adapt it for the big screen. It’s just what he’s been waiting for, because while Alma finds it to be standard horror clap trap, Hitch thinks, “but what if someone good made a horror picture.”

Article Author: Cinenerd

A Utah based writer, born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT for better and worse. Cinenerd has had an obsession with film his entire life, finally able to write about them since 2009, and the only thing he loves more are his wife and their two wiener dogs (Beatrix Kiddo and Pixar Animation). …

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