The other half
FILM The forgotten heroine of legendary director Alfred Hitchcock’s brilliant career is revealed, writes Roger Moore.
IT’S BEEN 30 years since Sir Alfred Hitchcock died, and more than 50 years since his most famous film – Psycho. So while his name, reputation and image remain in the public consciousness, generations have grown up not knowing much more than that about him.
And if casual film fans don’t know Hitchcock well, they certainly know even less about his wife, Alma Reville. His one-time boss, his editor, confidante and sounding board, Alma steps into the spotlight in the glamorous form of Dame Helen Mirren in Hitchcock, the new film about ‘‘Hitch’’ (Sir Anthony Hopkins) and the making of Psycho.
‘‘She’s not been forgotten by those who study Hitchcock intently,’’ Mirren says. ‘‘But the general public never knew of her role in his work, his career. They didn’t even know her enough to make her the ‘forgotten heroine’ of his career.’’
Stephen Rebello, in his book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, calls her ‘‘the exacting Mrs Hitchcock’’, the first person Alfred had to impress and please with any film idea, the sharp-eyed editor who spied Janet Leigh taking a ‘‘gulp’’ when she was supposed to be dead in the shower scene in Psycho.
‘‘She worked side by side with him for his whole career,’’ says screenwriter John J McLaughlin ( Black Swan), who used Rebello’s directing in his stead, and invents a possible romantic dalliance of her own to match her husband’s obsession with his blonde leading ladies, McLaughlin didn’t have to invent much to put the director’s ‘‘toughest audience’’ front and centre in the film. And the relationship he captures can’t have been an easy one in real life.
‘‘If I was a director, and I was constantly working with beautiful women, I think I know how my wife would respond,’’ McLaughlin laughs. ‘‘But Alma let him do his thing, even if it was hard for her to be two steps back, out of the limelight, seeing this obsession of his. That’s to her credit, and why she deserves credit, too.’’
A muse, Mirren says, ‘‘is a person outside who inspires you. But Alma was this hands-on partner in the work, an editor. Having done two films with women as the editors behind great men, I think that women, plainly, make very good editors – film editors and book editors. And since the success of a book or a film often comes down to judicial editing, that’s another endorsement’’.
If sends people out to rent to try to recall what all the fuss was about with this ground-breaking/ censorship-shattering horror film, that’s to be expected, McLaughlin says. And if Mirren’s performance in it sends film buffs back to their Hitchcock libraries, maybe to reread this biography or that one, that’s a good thing, too, Mirren adds.
‘‘An awful lot of film critics ought to know a lot more about Alma, too, I think.’’