The documentary, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock was originally intended as a celebration of sorts for the 100th anniversary of Hitchcock’s first film, Number 13 which would have been released in 1922 if it had been completed. It’s sort of fitting since Hitchcock was not your usual director. The documentary is unlike any that I’ve ever seen before. While it discusses just about every film that Alfred directed, there are no interviews with anyone who had anything to do with those films except for one. Himself.
Although the famed director died in 1980, he is the only one doing the talking. Well, actually, it’s Alistair McGowan that is the one doing the talking sounding very much like Hitchcock. The words have been written by the filmmaker, Mark Cousins. And the words have come from doing many hours of research watching every Hitchcock film during the COVID-19 lockdown. It’s a clever choice to present this film in this way, but it works. The film is getting rave reviews.
The documentary is unique in another way. It’s a celebration of filmmaking – that focuses on only one director. The film only touches a little of Hitchcock’s personal history. The majority of film time is spent dissecting what he was thinking when he was making his films. A close-up was never just a close up. An open door rarely meant that a person had forgotten to shut it. Symbolism was everything. He was always wanting to make films differently than other directors.
My Name is Hitchcock is broken down in about seven or eight themes like passion, fear and loneliness and how he chose how to present those things. Each section is filled with dozens of short clips from his famous movies. And often, they are not presented in the ways that you would expect. Sure, there are the classic scenes like Janet Leigh getting attacked in the shower from Psycho and Cary Grant running in the corn fields wearing a suit dodging a plane from North by Northwest, but there’s more. The movie delves deeper into other scenes from those same movies pointing out things that you may have missed. It also explores how we feel when we watch a Hitchcock movie.
As a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, I really liked this film, and I really like the lessons I learned while watching it. It will no doubt become a must-see for a future film appreciation class. Perhaps the film could have added a chapter showing clips from other director’s movies showing how they resembled Hitchcock’s films. (Like how M. Night Shyamalan used the color red in The Sixth Sense. He wasn’t the first – the film shows how Hitchcock did it first.)
However, there is one more technique that I didn’t really care for in this film. Throughout the documentary, Cousins tosses up the same still photographs of Alfred over and over again. Some other random contemporary shots unrelated to Hitchcock are shown as well. Sometimes they are used to help prove a point, but other times it’s just confusing on what the purpose is. This is rather nitpicky though.
All Images: Cohen Media Group
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