Going behind the scenes with Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi, cert. 12A) starts with Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) at the 1959 premiere of North by Northwest, and looking for the story for his next movie.

A book by Robert Bloch about Ed Gein, who killed two women, fascinates Hitch, but Paramount Studios boss Barney Balaban (Richard Portnow) isn’t keen on a film called “Psycho”.

Hitch and Alma mortgage their Bel Air home to finance the film themselves, engaging Joseph Stefano (Ralph Macchio) to adapt the book. To play Norman Bates, they choose Anthony Perkins (played by lookalike James D’Arcy), and Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) is cast as Marion Crane – to be killed off early in the film – while Marion’s sister Lila is played by Vera Miles (Jessica Biel) who’s had mixed experiences working with Hitchcock.

The collaboration of Alma on his movies was an important part of their marriage – she was an experienced screenwriter and film editor – but the side-story here is of her relationship with fellow writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), who’d adapted Strangers on a Train (1951) for Hitch. Is Alma visiting his beach house to help him polish his new screenplay, or is Hitch right in his insecurity about what goes on by the beach?

Hitch himself was a flirt, with a bit of innuendo to match, but Alma seems to have him well sussed. As Psycho challenges Hitchcock’s skills, not least in manipulating censor Geoffrey Shurlock (Kurtwood Smith) over the shower scene, he needs Alma on board, leading to an angry monologue from Mirren over what she’s brought to the marriage and to the movie.

After My Week Wi th Marilyn (2011) movies about making movies are now a genre. This is based on Stephen Rebello’s book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of ‘Psycho.’

Mir ren and a well-padded and prostheticfaced Hopkins are key to whether this works. It does, and while it’s not brilliant, it’s good fun, and made with a Hitchcockian twinkle in the lens – not least in the appearances of Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) in the director’s imagination.

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Steve Parish