Mark Cousins’ My Name is Alfred Hitchcock

Perhaps fittingly, few have so regularly defied death and straddled the “uncanny valley” as has Alfred Hitchcock. For instance, his original introductions for Alfred Hitchcock Presents were “resurrected” and colorized for the 1985 reboot of the classic anthology series. Now, he narrates his own documentary from beyond the grave. Of course, it really isn’t Hitchcock. It is narrator Alistair McGowan emulating his voice and persona. One can imagine the questions Hitch might have asked about these projects, like how much was his estate paid and did the checks clear? Regardless, Hitchcock is still quite entertaining in Mark Cousins’ My Name is Alfred Hitchcock, which opens this Friday in New York.

At times, McGowan’s Hitchcock sounds somewhat like Howard Suber in The Power of Film, especially during discussion of his first theme—his characters’ pursuit of “escape”—which echoes Suber’s emphasis on metaphorically and physically “trapped” central characters. However, in the case of Hitchcock, it feels considerably more valid.

Cousins’ other themes should strike Hitchcock fans as equally sound: “desire,” “loneliness,” “time” (which should be speeded up or slow-down, to the protagonist’s discomfort), fulfillment, and a truncated discussion of “height.”  Indeed, considering Hitch’s use of Rushmore in North by Northwest, the bell tower in Vertigo, and the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur, Hitchcock was arguably the king of commanding heights.

Naturally, Cousins incorporates extensive film clips, including shrewd and liberal use of Psycho and The Birds. Although often unfairly overlooked, Torn Curtain and The Trouble with Harry also get substantial screentime, but poor Topaz remains a red-headed stepchild amid his filmography. Still, Cousins serves up a reasonable survey that might prompt viewers to revisit films they maybe have not seen in years, like I Confess, starring Montgomery Cliff, a refreshingly sympathetic portrait of a Catholic priest, “trapped” in a Hitchcockian situation.

The handful of Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes are either omitted or glossed over so quickly even an attentive viewer would miss them. However, Cousins thoroughly mines his films from the 1920s and early 1930s. Sadly, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock probably will not play well on hate-filled college campuses these days, because it forthrightly covers his work on the Holocaust documentary, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.

Cousins dives pretty deeply into Hitchcockiana, while McGowan successfully evokes his spirit. Frankly, he is better at capturing the filmmaker’s attitude and dry wit than impersonating his voice, but the former is much more important than the latter. Frankly, this is Cousins best film in years, because it fully embraces and focuses on Hitchcock (unlike the overly subjective The Eyes of Orson Welles, in which Cousins regularly made cheap throwaway “Citizen Trump” references that will badly date the doc in twenty years). Recommended for Hitchcock fans, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock opens this Friday (10/25) in New York, at the Quad.