Sir Anthony Hopkins stars as the Master of Suspense in film that goes behind the scenes of the making of PSYCHO
HITCHCOCK (Sacha Gervasi, 2012)
Opens Friday, November 23
www.hitchcockthemovie.com
In 2006, Toby Jones portrayed Truman Capote in Infamous, but he had already been upstaged by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who had won the Best Actor Oscar earlier that year for playing the social gadfly in the 2005 biopic Capote. Well, history is likely to repeat itself; Jones can currently be seen on HBO playing Alfred Hitchcock in Julian Jarrold’s The Girl, which follows the Master of Suspense as he obsesses over Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) while making The Birds and Marnie, under the careful watch of his wife, Alma Reville (Imelda Staunton). It’s a slight film, but Jones does a fine job as the creepy Hitch. However, his performance is liable to get lost with the theatrical release of Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock, in which the great British director is played by the inimitable Sir Anthony Hopkins, with Helen Mirren taking on the role of Alma as they struggle to make what would become their biggest success, Psycho. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible for the audience to separate Hitchcock from Hopkins, a central failing that, compounded by a lifeless subplot involving a potential romance between Alma and writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), leaves the film rather dry and boring. It is fascinating to watch Hitch battle the studio (and the censors) over the financing and distribution of what was an extremely controversial film at the time, but the imaginary scenes with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) are forced and unnecessary, and while James D’Arcy does a good job playing the quirky Anthony Perkins, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel are wasted as Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, respectively. And yes, that’s Ralph Macchio as writer Joseph Stefano. Based on Stephen Rebello’s well-received 1990 book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Gervasi’s feature debut — he previously wrote and directed the 2009 documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil — is like a fair-to-middling Hitchcock flick or an average episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, containing interesting tidbits but never really achieving the captivating sense of mystery and romance (and fun!) that made his films and himself so special. It’s a shame that with two pictures tracing Hitchcock’s unique working process during a seminal period in his career, both fall relatively flat.