A richly detailed essay film imagines Hitchcock commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips.
Alfred Hitchcock’s voice remains indelible, like a droll bloodhound trying to hypnotize you over tea. Mark Cousins’s richly detailed essay film “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” imagines the director commenting on his own oeuvre over a mesmerizing daisy chain of clips, with an insider’s knowledge of filmmaking.
Lest that premise induce suspicions of artificial intelligence: The impressionist Alistair McGowan reproduces Hitchcock’s plummy drawl. But the insights belong to Cousins, a world-class close reader known for his mellifluous journeys through film history and cinephilia. Over sinuously edited, high-quality clips, his Hitchcock addresses playful and piercing observations to the audience in virtuosic variations on themes: escape, desire, loneliness and so on, from both famous and lesser-known films.
Hitchcock’s work here suggests a series of dreamlike passageways through seemingly ordinary worlds where desire and danger open new doors. A typical riff mingles the cinematic and personal: Hitchcock’s “escape” from his British stomping ground to America; the escapist painterly countrysides that recur in his films; and the narrative traps his characters must cheat, like when Paul Newman flees a theater by shouting “fire” in “Torn Curtain.”
The resulting director’s commentary from beyond the grave should send any viewer supermarket-sweeping Hitchcock titles onto the queue. Yet whereas scenes like Ingrid Bergman murmuring “you love me” to Cary Grant in “Notorious” are still jaw-dropping, the voice-over conceit can become stifling, and arguably limits our critical point of view.
But as Alma Hitchcock reportedly encouraged her creative partner and husband: “Be interested.” Cousins’s attuned eye and ear keep us interested afresh in the Hitchcock magic.
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
Not rated. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
