In “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” you hear the great man say early on, “You do know films are lies, don’t you?” In truth, the line between truth and lies bobs and weaves throughout this fascinating take on the eminent filmmaker. We hear Hitchcock from beyond the grave, sharing fascinating insights with us about his impressive body of work of 53 features throughout a career spanning more than five decades, ranging from silents to black-and-whites to full color.
At the start of this film by Mark Cousins, playing at the M.V. Film Center, Hitchcock explains, “So many people have had their say about my movies. They’ve analyzed my storytelling … But they’ve missed things. There’s more to say about me. Look closely at my pictures, and you’ll see things. I see things. I would like to tell you things I see. Not mystery or suspense nor movie stardom. That’s been done to death. Can we look at my movies from more unusual angles?”
And that’s exactly what “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” does. It examines how he told stories through the lens of six themes: escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfillment, and height. For each theme, Hitchcock narrates his cinematographic intent, using clips from his films to immediately convey the concepts, increasing our understanding of the man’s supreme talent.
For escape, he speaks first a bit about his life, sprinkling biographical information throughout. Through contemporary footage, we see the London suburb in which he grew up, and then “escaped” later to the U.S., in 1939. Hitchcock then shows us different ways he uses escape. There is a scene in “To Catch a Thief” where he transforms the Scottish countryside into a moody Gothic landscape. “I want to draw you into a place and season … To make you feel like you’re on a holiday from your life.”
There is a literal escape scene, with Cary Grant racing down the long empty field with a crop duster plane pursuing him in “North by Northwest,” or the moment in “Rear Window” when Jimmy Stewart, confined to a wheelchair in his dark apartment, uses the flash on his camera to keep blinding the killer who has come in after him: “I always wanted to escape from the traditional way of doing things. I wanted to find a visual surprise … From the silent era to my latest films, I was trying to escape the predictable way of doing things.”
Hitchcock says the second theme, desire, is the opposite of escaping. He takes us through the magnificent ways he filmed loved scenes in various films: coming in close from afar, circling a couple of inches from the embrace, and softly shot glances of desire, such as with the steamy kiss with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in “Notorious.”
Loneliness is next. He declares, “We should admit escape and desire are rather alike. They are responses to life’s realities … And you realize you are alone.” A scene from “The Birds” where Tippi Hedren is inside with the gulls smashing up against and breaking the windowpanes is a powerful example of Hitchcock’s skill to evoke emotion. In “Marnie,” he films Tippi Hedren walking away from us down a long, utterly empty train station, alone as she escapes with stolen goods. There is the eerie conversation in “Psycho” where Anthony Perkins calmly speaks about loneliness to Janet Leigh, foreshadowing the iconic shower scene where she is utterly alone in her plight.
Time is the fourth theme in which Hitchcock tells us he worked relentlessly fast, making nine movies alone during World War II. “I did think movies were time machines. I wanted to control your heartbeat the way my pacemaker controlled mine.” With “The Birds” again, he stretches time out to create tension. We watch Leigh sit down, rummage in her purse for her cigarettes and lighter, and then slowly smoke as the birds creepily accumulate nearby. In “Rope,” Hitchcock melds past and present through his camera lens.
For fulfillment, Hitchcock speaks of his relationship to the term: “When I started to film, I watched and learned, and that was fulfilling. I needed to make films. Not for the money or the fame or glamour. I needed to make films because of what the camera is. And I wanted to know where to put it, and what that would make you, the audience, feel.” He describes how his choice to film the two protagonists wrestling right under the rising and lowering hooves of the carousel horses in “Strangers on a Train” pleases him.
Hitchcock takes us through what he was trying to achieve in the final theme of height, whether that is zooming in from high above on a small, telling detail, filming a scene looking down upon the action, giving us an omniscient view, or following his characters as they slowly ascend the stairs to create tension. He even explains developing the mirage of height in “Rope” when Jimmy Stewart throws open a window in a busy city, and the sounds from the street below permeate the scene, giving the illusion of being six stories high.
At the film’s end, Hitchcock states, “Movies are a trickster medium. I am a trickster.” And when the credits roll, a very large trick is revealed.
Ultimately, though, whether you are an avid fan or familiar with just a few of his works, “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” will increase your admiration for his mastery, and make you want to go back and take yet another glance at them with all the stimulating insights at your fingertips.
“My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock” will be at the M.V. Film Center on Dec. 4. For more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
