Will the Real Alfred Hitchcock Please Stand Up?

It's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday today—he would have been 125. And there was a day last year, when I suddenly became besieged with a lot of Hitchcock documentaries, all purporting to use his words to get at the mystery behind the director of so many mysteries and thrillers. Even the names of the documentaries were creepily similar, confusingly so, which would have made the old guy sniff at the lack of originality, rather than chuckle.

But, the name is the thing. The name "Alfred Hitchcock" was a brand and more people knew his name and the type of entertainment he made than any other director. Like an irony in one of his movies, it was both a blessing...and a curse.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock (John Ashton McCarthy, 2021) A career overview, the type you're likely to see if someone has no real access to the subject and merely a large collection of clips to cull from. Think of it as an "Entertainment Tonight" career overview...with a little bit of speculation about what made Hitch "tick." But, not much.

 

And it's extensive: from home movies to his interviews—both filmed and merely audio as well as with some confederates, old and new—starting from Hitchcock's childhood, including (invaluably) his time in early British silents and German studios. And a lot of unseen talking heads. A couple of snatches of past Spielberg interviews are included, but most of the comments are from Eli Roth (for some reason), William Friedkin, Edgar Wright, and John Landis. Ben Mankiewicz weighs in. Much mention is made of Joan Harrison (as it probably should be, given the work she did for him in his American transition and on his television shows) and there is a lot of nice footage from the AFI salute to the man, including his extensive tribute to his secret weapon, wife Alma Reville. There are nice touches throughout, and it's quite entertainingly put together. But, as an exploration of the man, his movies, and how they all relate, it's pretty basic stuff.

 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2023) The iconoclastic Irish documentarian (he made The Story of Film: An Odyssey and The Eyes of Orson Welles) makes his look at Hitchcock (for his first film's 100th anniversary) with a conceit that he's used in some of his lesser-known films, as a conversation between the filmmaker and the director-subject (voiced by Alistair McGowan and quite convincingly). Oh, some of the things that McGowan-Hitchcock says in the film are a matter of record, but Cousins uses this conversational version of "Alfred Hitchcock Explains It All To You" to build on themes that might have gotten lost in the chases and cameos, the Blondes and the wrong men and the usual accoutrements of a Hitchcock film—"the core of things" (as the faux-Hitchcock states). These are Cousins' personal thoughts and observances being seduced and manipulated by Hitchcock, who used the mechanics of cinema, the psychology of photography, and his own neuroses to dredge up our fears, raise our blood-pressures, and ponder our natures (while pandering to them, as well).

And so, though they're Cousins' observations through the voice of Hitchcock, one could hardly help thinking that Hitchcock is being misinterpreted ("You do know that movies are lies, don't you?" says the faux-Hitchcock at one point) as he was one of the most obvious of directors—what he intended he put on the screen. It's just that nobody had done things quite like that before, made movies like that before, thought thoughts like that and confessed them so nakedly like that before.

Cousins is generous with clips as he focuses on six themes that thematically run through the director's films: Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. Just reading that list, one can tick off random instances from Hitchcock films that will prove the point, but that they run consistently through his work, even fleetingly more than proves Cousins' point.

 

At the same time, Cousins' Hitchcock has a marketer's point of view on making films. This version emphasizes "stars and glamour" as the motivator for attracting audiences, as they already have a sympathetic, empathetic view of the actors, doing a lot of the leg-work to get them on "their side." To the point where Cousins' Hitchcock avatar never mentions character's names in his movies, only the thespians. "When Cary Grant" does this or "when Grace Kelly does that."

 

Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009) 

"You think all the way through that cinema is going to be killed by television or television is going to kill cinema or America is going to kill Russia or Russia is going to kill America. But at the end, it’s the third one, the new one, the younger one, the YouTube version, that comes along and kills them all."

Jose Luis Borges' initial short story August 25, 1983 

 

"They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. Or, that he will kill you. I can't remember which, but...the gist of it is...that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die."

 

The wildest of the Hitchcock documentaries, Double Take is a "found-footage" documentary using even the very grain of the image to tell the story. Based on a Jose Luis Borges short story, "August 25, 1983" and expanded from Grimonperez's* earlier short Looking for Alfred, it is a long story, narrated by another Hitchcock sound-alike, Mark Perry, of an encounter a fictitious Hitchcock has in 1963 with himself from 1980. It's a shaggy-dog story, recreated with a Hitchcock lookalike, and a lot of editing between Hitchcock footage...from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and other sources, interspersed with news coverage of geo-political events and Instant Folgers commercials (which turn bad coffee into domestic drama). It's a bit of a satire about the new replacing the old, but not changing much for the transition. It doesn't precisely nail its thesis, events being difficult to bend to one's advantage. But, there are moments of wit and some lost opportunities.

 

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024) Writer-director Bouzereau has made a career out of directing films in support of other films; watch any DVD of any "important" film of the last 30 years and Bouzereau has directed or produced it, even producing anniversary-soundtrack expansions of some film scores. His work has given him a rolodex of contacts and access to some of the great directors and the archives of many a film. His style is breezy, entertaining and imaginative—when he wants to get to the bottom of a story, he'll get there and make it as memorable as its subject. And when doing a documentary of, say, Mark Harris' Five Came Back, he'll shed the customary upbeat promotional stance required to gloss up the subject to a glittering press-release, and risk being too revelatory, even to the subject's disadvantage, in order to drive home his point and make it the definitive word on the subject. He's good. Very good. It's no wonder so many high-profile directors and producers trust him telling the story of their work.

And in his film for StudioCanal and TCM, Becoming Hitchcock, he also tries to get to the depths of what made Hitchcock not only unique but "a brand."  His thesis being that Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail was the first of what one could call "a Hitchcock film" with the tropes of wronged people, distinctive weapons, arresting blondes, landmark chases, eroticism, food fetishes and such being firmly in place as they would be for the rest of Hitchcock's career (what, no mothers or enclosed places?)

It's true to a certain extent, even considering there is some cherry-picking going on. But, if one is looking for "the" first "Hitchcock" film, Blackmail is the most likely suspect (the only reason it doesn't loom larger in peoples' memories is it was in his British period, on the cusp of the sound era, and—being in the public domain—it seems less valued as a marketable property than his other films (which is a bit ironic).

 

But, some elements that are discussed—the tropes—are in his earlier films, because what made Hitchcock Hitchcock were his obsessions and his neuroses, which were there in little sparks at the beginning with even his first film, his vulnerabilities only growing full-flower when he had more confidence in the control of his films (how's that for irony?).

But, sure, say it was Blackmail because of the chase through the British Museum (all done in studio, by the way). But, the film is also notable for being the director's first sound film—he did another version for silent cinemas that were not speaker-wired-up while making this one, sometimes shooting alternate footage for scenes where title cards needed to do the talking. There are, frankly, radical transitions using only sound, showing how freakishly ingenious Hitchcock could be playing with new toys. 

 

And how's this for radical? Hitchcock's "blonde" for this one was a Czech actress named Anny Ondra whose English was so heavily-accented that she was directed to just mouth the words while actress Joan Barry performed the vocal part out of sight of the camera. The illusion is almost flawless, noticeable only if you're looking (and listening for it). You come away from Bouzereau's film maybe not so assured that Blackmail set the template for what was "Hitchcockian" in the future, but certainly convinces that the man was a genius for figuring out ways for telling stories pictorially, psychologically...but also sonically.

But, then...we already knew that.

* Grimonperez was nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" Oscar last year for his documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

 

Five Came Back

Five Came Back (Laurent Bouzereau, 2017) If you've ever cared to delve into the "Special Extra's" of some of your favorite DVD's, you might have seen the name of Laurent Bouzereau, a French director who has done a lot of producing/helming chores on many "Making of" features as well as a few soundtrack reconstructions. One word comes to mind when considering Bouzereau's work and that is "definitive"—once he's done a documentary on a film by Spielberg, or Hitchcock, or Scorsese, or DePalma, or Lucas, or Lean, or Bertolucci, you can pretty much say "Okay, that's been done, I don't need to see anything more about it" because Bouzereau's research is fastidious, his story-telling skills make the most esoteric points obvious to the untrained, and his attitude incessantly celebratory.

He has expanded his reach and, under Spielberg's "Amblin" shingle directed a 3 hour distillation of Mark Harris' extraordinarily well-researched book "Five Came Back," detailing the war-time careers of five Hollywood filmmakers who volunteered into the Army Signal Corps for the purposes of documenting the war, creating propaganda films for the public and educational films for the troops, with all the professionalism and artistry that they had to bear. The purpose was to "sell" the war and counter the propaganda efforts of the Axis powers, who were creating a new form with the use of film.

Guillermo del Toro takes on Frank Capra

It's a complex story of the life- and career-transforming effects on five very different directors—Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Huston. The backgrounds and career-stages of the five couldn't be more diverse. Capra and Ford started their careers in the silent era, while Huston had just started directing films after a tenure as a screen-writer. William Wyler was an immigrant from the very theater where the war in Europe was taking place. George Stevens was known for making stylish comedies.

Francis Ford Coppola talks about John Huston

Bouzereau tells their stories, with archive footage—some of which has never been seen due to its graphic nature—the work of the film-makers, archived interviews with the five, and a chorus of contemporary film-makers who bridge the gaps in the narration (done by Meryl Streep) with anecdotes and analysis. The "new kids" take on a director apiece: Guillermo del Toro focuses on Capra, Steven Spielberg on Wyler, Lawrence Kasdan on Stevens, Francis Ford Coppola on Huston, and Paul Greengrass on Ford. 

Paul Greengrass' subject is John Ford.

The footage taken by Ford and Stevens is gruesome and unnerving, so much so that Ford walked to a French chateau for officers and went on a drinking binge that put him in a stupor for three days, ending his military service. Stevens continued on through The Battle of the Bulge and the opening of the Nazi concentration camps where he realized his job had changed from documenting to gathering evidence—he also had the temerity to re-stage the surrender of Germany outside when the setting proved to be too dark to photograph. Wyler spent so much time filming the crew of the "Memphis Belle" that he lost most of his hearing, and remained close to the crew for the rest of his life. Huston became adept at "faking" footage of war-time action, and his last film on "Battle Fatigue" was banned from being seen until the 1980's. Capra's film of "Know Your Enemy: Japan" was found to be so racist that even Gen. Douglas MacArthur refused to allow it to be seen by troops. 

Lawrence Kasdan goes over the service of George Stevens.

What the film really sells is the way the war changed the directors, as was apparent immediately after they came back from the war. Ford's first film was the decidedly downbeat They were Expendable, Capra made the despairing It's a Wonderful Life, Wyler directed The Best Years of Our Lives, about the struggles of returning veterans, while Huston made his long-planned exploration of the worst parts of human nature with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Stevens stopped making films for years, unable to shake what he'd experienced and made dramas instead starting with A Place in the Sun and, ultimately, The Diary of Anne Frank.

They emerged changed down to their souls and their outlook on life and their art.

Spielberg says he watches Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives every year.