Proof you can’t silence a master manipulator
He’s the eccentric auteur who was as much a showman as he was a film director. The master-manipulator who thrilled and shocked audiences with such memorable, titillating and potentially transgressive tales as Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, Rope and Marnie. The larger-thanlife figure who possessed both a distinctive voice and a silhouette.
Now, just when you thought his output and oeuvre had been analysed and dissected to death, Alfred Hitchcock is back – seemingly narrating this overview of his cinematic career from beyond the grave.
One of the unexpected delights of last year’s New Zealand International Film Festival, this two-hour trawl through the motifs featured in, and motives behind, Hitch’s feature film hits and misses is the brainchild of Northern Irish documentarian and cineaste Mark Cousins.
Yes, the man who gave the world the 15-hour global odyssey The Story of Film and allowed us to see through The Eyes of Orson Welles is this time channelling the East Londoner’s distinctive drawl via the magnificent mimicry of serial impressionist
Alistair McGowan (Spitting Image).
Provoking us right from the opening montages with the almost conspiratorial challenge that “you do know that films are lies”, Cousins’ critiquing cipher then proceeds to take us not on a chronological journey, but rather one divided into six themes: Escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment and height.
Delivered with an impressive approximation of Hitchcock’s notoriously wry, dry sense of humour and illustrated with an almost overwhelming array of astute observations, adroitly chosen film clips and intimate behind-the-scenes imagery, Cousins attempts to directly engage the audience as the man himself might well have done (as anyone who has seen his TV show or trailers can attest).
While the method and Cousins’ analysis won’t be everyone’s White Lady, it’s at least a much less ingratiating approach than Eyes’ “love-letter” to Welles – and one that will certainly deepen your appreciation for some of the legendary director’s lesserknown works – no doubt stoking a desire to seek them out.
Then there’s just the now messy, potentially frustrating prospect of where to find them in this supposedly “liberating” age of digital, rather than physical, media. I wonder what Hitch would have made of this very modern predicament?