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MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK

What You Need To Know:

MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK is a documentary about the famous influential movie director. An actor pretends to be Alfred Hitchcock and narrates the movie. He goes through many clips of Hitchcock’s movies and discusses them according to six themes. The themes are Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. For example, the Height segment discusses scenes where Hitchcock lets his camera ascend to a great height or show a scene from a great height to elicit emotional responses.

It’s fun to go through Alfred Hitchcock’s movies in MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK. The movie will encourage fans to revisit his classic movies and to see some of his more obscure movies that they may have missed. The movie has a good representation of Hitchcock’s work. However, the focus on themes prevents the movie from considering the overall effect of a whole movie. MOVIEGUIDE® also would have liked more focus on classic movies like VERTIGO, REBECCA and NOTORIOUS in MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK. The movie contains some violent movie scenes, images of passionate kissing and a reference to a character wearing women’s clothes.

Content:

CONTENT: (RoRo, C, B, O, Ho, VV, S, N, A, D, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong Romantic worldview about the personal artistic vision and personal expression of the famous acclaimed, iconic movie director, Alfred Hitchcock, in his movies, focusing on the six themes of escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment, and height, with brief references to the hero Catholic priest and his dilemma in I CONFESS and some moral elements, plus a reference to the occult fortune teller in THE RING and the phony occult psychic in FAMILY PLOT and a reference to the housemaid in REBECCA who has an illicit obsession with her employer’s dead first wife (the movie itself hints they may have been secret lovers) and the narrator calls the murderer in the 1930 movie MURDER!, a “transvestite,” a technical term for a man who likes to wear women’s clothes;

Foul Language:
No foul language;

Violence:
Some movie clips shown are about strong and light violent behavior, including murder and such examples as two people fight a Soviet spy in TORN CURTAIN and eventually stick his head in an oven (the movie shows them struggling to hold hm down whole his hands flay about until the hands stop), an assassin shoots at people while escaping in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, Cary Grant’s character runs from the crop dusting plane in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, a British woman contemplates killing her foreign terrorist husband in SABOTAGE (1936) because he’s responsible for the death of her little brother, a bullet pierces a window, and a man’s white tuxedo shows blood starting to spread, and he slowly collapses while other people are dancing in the 1934 version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, images of the stabbing of the detective in PSYCHO, and a comical fight scene in the luggage compartment of a train in THE 39 STEPS;

Sex:
No sex scenes, but there are three or so scenes of passionate kissing between unmarried couples, shot in close up, and some flirting such as a scene in a train compartment between the hero and the girl of his dreams in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, the serial killer/rapist in FRENZY takes a female victim up to an apartment, and the camera slowly pulls back down the staircase when they close the door behind them, a reference to a character in MURDER! being a transvestite, and a scene shows that the housemaid in REBECCA is obsessed with her employer’s dead first wife;

Nudity:
Images of upper male nudity from three Hitchcock movies, including a swimming and beach scene in TO CATCH A THIEF, plus a woman enters a shower in the movie PSYCHO, but nothing explicit is shown, plus a new scene is created where black fingers run down someone’s bare back;

Alcohol Use:
Brief alcohol use;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Brief smoking but no drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Narrator lies about dropping a lighter down a street sewer grate but admits he lied about that later.

More Detail:

MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK is a documentary where an Alfred Hitchcock impersonator goes through the movies directed by Hitchcock to find common themes and common images that appear time and time again in Hitchcock’s movies. MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK is an entertaining, insightful look at Hitchcock’s work, but it’s a Non-Christian discussion with clips of violent scenes, images of passionate kissing and a reference to a character wearing women’s clothes in a 1930 movie.

The movie is narrated by an actor, Alistair McGowan, who impersonates Alfred Hitchcock, speaking words written by Director Mark Cousins. Cousins wrote the book THE STORY OF FILM, which he made into a 930-minute, 15-part TV documentary in 2011. His Hitchcock movie is divided into six sections, with each section dealing with a theme in Hitchcock’s work. The movie’s themes are not tied to any typical words associated with Hitchcock, such as suspense and mystery. Thus, the six themes in order are: escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment, and height. Each section shows clips of Hitchcock’s 57 movies from the silent era to the 1976 movie FAMILY PLOT.

For example, the beginning of the escape section mentions how Hitchcock created movies that people could “escape into” when they go to the movie theater. The escape section also briefly discusses some characters who are stuck in figurative or actual prisons from which they want to escape, such as Ingrid Bergman’s psychiatrist in SPELLBOUND or Henry Fonda’s character in THE WRONG MAN, who goes to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. For the loneliness section, the movie discusses some of the images of lonely women in Hitchcock’s movies, like Joan Fontaine’s shy wife in REBECCA whose loneliness is exacerbated because she feels that she can’t measure up to her husband’s glamorous first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. There’s also, of course, the Miss Lonelyhearts character in REAR WINDOW, who contemplates suicide until she hears the pianist nearby play his new lyrical composition. The final segment on height discusses several scenes where Hitchcock lets his camera ascend to a great height or show a scene from a great height to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.

One important thing the movie doesn’t discuss is Hitchcock’s view of suspense. The director says he feels that this aspect of Hitchcock’s work has been discussed often by many other people, including Hitchcock himself. MOVIEGUIDE® advises moviegoers to consult French director Francois Truffaut’s book-length interview with Hitchcock for this and other subjects concerning the man’s movies.

It’s fun to go through Alfred Hitchcock’s movies in MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK. The movie will encourage fans to revisit his classic movies and to see the more obscure movies they may never have seen. The movie is insightful and has a good representation of Hitchcock’s work, but the focus on themes prevents the movie from considering the overall effect of a whole movie. Thus, masterpieces like REBECCA, NOTORIOUS, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, REAR WINDOW, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and VERTIGO are only discussed in a perfunctory manner.

MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK takes a Romantic approach to Hitchcock’s movies. In that kind of an approach, a fan, scholar or critic focuses on the artist’s personal vision and personal expression, not whether his work lines up with any spiritual, moral, political, or aesthetic standards. The Romantic approach may include discussion of the spiritual, moral, political, or aesthetic content in an artist’s work, but only within the idea of the artist’s personal vision and personal expression.

MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK doesn’t have any foul language, but it does have scenes of violence. There are also some images of passionate kissing and a technical reference in one movie to a character wearing women’s clothes. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children.