"HITCHCOCK" NEEDS ITS OWN SHOWER SCENE

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

 

As an exercise in acting, watching Anthony Hopkins play the title role of Alfred Hitchcock is often more interesting than watching “Hitchcock,” the Sacha Gervasi –directed film that goes behind the scenes during the making of “Psycho.”

Hopkins’ challenge is to capture the spirit of Hitchcock, whose public persona is probably more familiar to audiences than any other director, without doing a straight imitation by stringing all of Hitchcock’s fidgety mannerisms together.

In this, Hopkins is fairly successful. It doesn’t take too long to forget the actor isn’t the director. The next most important part of “Hitchcock” is seeing how the director, at the tender age of 60 with decades of success, felt as insecure and unsure of himself as any beginner.

Which brings us to the actual movie “Hitchcock.” Chronologically, the year is 1959 and Hitch is tired of all his success with “North by Northwest,” “Rear Window,” etc. In something of a late mid-life crisis, he finds a rebellious nature in wondering “What if someone made a really good horror movie.”

In the 1950s, horror movies had about as much public acceptance as rock ’n’ roll. Maybe it was that challenge which Hitchcock found so irresistible.

But rather than pursuing the inner machinations of Hitchcock’s creative genius, we get a more melodramatic story of his struggles with his wife Alma (Helen Mirren) and the Paramount Studio executives.

The more these insiders insisted that making a movie out of Robert Bloch’s book “Psycho” was a bad idea, the more determined Hitchcock was to do it. Since there is no suspense in wondering how this gamble turned out, we are left to smile with superiority as those smarty pants executives kept making such a fuss.

Meanwhile there is the kitchen sink drama of Hitchcock’s home life with Alma, a bright and loving woman whose editing skills are given considerable credit for Hitchcock’s success.

The film’s last third is a mildly interesting battle with the powerful censorship board that kept insisting the shower scene contained nudity.

Hitchcock’s strategy, which was brilliant, was to edit the shower sequence in bits of film less than a second long, always implying, never revealing – while composer Bernard Herman’s unforgettable stabbing knife sounds screamed louder and louder.

But are all these separate parts enough to create a screen experience at least as exciting as a Hitchcock movie?

Not really.

“Hitchcock” is diverting, has its moments, and -- for “Psycho” fans -- some genuine irony, but will it stick in the minds of that generation’s fans? Not like those iconic scenes from “The Birds,” “Vertigo,” “Rear Window” or “North by Northwest.”