It’s been more than 43 years since the death of Alfred Hitchcock, but the legacy of the master of suspense and the psychological thriller not only continues to feed the voracious hunger of cinephiles, admirers and future film directors. His work is a continuous source of style and learning, full of small details that must have gone unnoticed by many in a constant game of surprises that the director proposed to the viewer. “I love my audience. I love playing with you”, we hear him speak in the documentary Mi nombre es Alfred Hitchcock, premiering today in Spanish theaters.
And it is that the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins, creator of the bibles of modern cinephilia La historia del cine: An odyssey or Women make film, has taken it upon himself to resurrect the author of Vertigen by examining exhaustively through his own voice ( which is none other than that of the actor Alistair McGowan) the 53 feature films he directed. From his debut in 1922 with the unfinished Number 13, which was never released, through other lesser-known silent films such as La mujer del granjero (1928), to Rebeca, Psicosi, Els ocells or Frenesí, with the intention to analyze them with a new and radical approach. “I liked the idea of ??him speaking to us in the first person. I made a documentary about Orson Welles and I was talking to him, but I thought it would be interesting to approach Hitchcock more intimately, to bring us closer to his thoughts. It is true that much has been said and written about him, so in principle it did not seem necessary to film another story. But my producer told me if I wanted to make a documentary about his figure and the first thing I did was write down a series of words: evasion, desire, loneliness, time, fullness and height, which became the chapters in how I structured the film and what were some of his obsessions”, explains Cousins, who last year already delved into the personality of producer Jeremy Thomas, in a conversation with La Vanguardia.
The first image we see is that of the British director looking at the viewer with his characteristic pure mouth and addressing the audience. “Do you see me in the trees?” he asks, mischievously. He talks about the monument they erected in his honor 20 years ago at the former Gainsborough studios in Islington (London). “I was an artist, a daredevil, a flea market”, he defines himself. Since his death “many things have changed”, and he invites us to take a closer look at some of his most memorable works to find new data, new perspectives. “There is much more to say about me”, comments this cinema perfectionist while revealing that he does not close the doors in fiction for the viewer to act as a voyeur in his films. And he invites us to escape from our routine, just as he did by fleeing from the predictable, from conventionalisms, in an incessant search for surprise: “In the last century we were restless, we liked to fantasize […] I want them to enjoy the “unexpected”. That escape is one of the recurring themes in his film universe. It is present in 39 steps, Sabotage, Haunted by death, Frenzy … as well as the use of visual metaphors in Vertigen, the “electrifying” loneliness of Tippi Hedren in Marnie, or the identification with the character of James Stewart in The prying window
Cousins’ admiration for Hitch came from an early age. “As a child I loved scary movies and when I saw Psycho at the age of 9 I realized that it was not only terrifying, but there was something more, an atmosphere, a visual richness that I had not seen in any other film of the genre It was a very exciting moment for me.” This expert in reformulating the history of cinema from an experiential perspective admits that the film starring Anthony Perkins is not his favorite – “I prefer Sabotaje and the one that makes me cry the most is Encadenados” – and that “we all have our own relationship with Hitchcock”. He confesses that he has seen titles such as Vertigen, Psicosis or Strangers on a train several times, but that he had only once seen the rest of the works that are examined in detail in the documentary. “I have a good visual memory”, he says with a wry smile. From here he has been pulling the strings with McGowan’s complicit voice at the command of a narrative that plays with the viewer in a nod to Hitch himself. “I needed a very good actor and Alistair is the best. It’s not an imitation, what it does. You have the feeling of hearing the real Hitchcock”.
In fact, following his voice carefully allows us to entertain the audience with an object to make us fall into the trap. Hitchcock never stops manipulating his air. Not dead! Between images from his films, archive photographs and himself grabbing the camera, this man who never left anything to chance talks openly about his health problems and the need to disappear from his own self . He also fondly remembers his wife, Alma, editor and reviewer of his stories: “We see life through the same lens,” he says.
Cousins ??claims that she was “very important in his life” and that in many countries there is a perception that the director was a misogynist. “With the exception of Tippi Hedren, who he treated very badly, he loved working with women. Janet Leigh and Teresa Wright adored him, and he maintained a good friendship with Carole Lombard.” He believes that Hitchcock would have adapted without a problem to today’s digital world and that “he would be delighted with the resources of technology in cinema”. What would you like to ask him if he were alive? “I would like to know what Picasso thought. He was very interested in painting and I think they are two of the most influential image creators of the 20th century. Of course, it seems to me that Hitch was much more cordial.” But that is an opinion I would give for another documentary.
