Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Following his great success with "North by Northwest," director Alfred Hitchcock makes a daring choice for his next project: an adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho." When the studio refuses to back the picture, Hitchcock decides to pay for it himself in exchange for a percentage of the profits. His wife, Alma Reville, has serious reservations about the film but supports him nonetheless. Still, the production strains the couple's marriage.
Hitchcock (2012) is a watchable but modest biopic centred on the making of Psycho and the Hitchcock marriage. Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren bring considerable craft to their roles, keeping things watchable, but Hopkins leans heavily on prosthetics and mannerism rather than genuine transformation. The plot is competent but familiar biopic territory — creative genius faces studio resistance, marriage is tested — with little structural invention. Cinematography is serviceable and period-accurate but unremarkable, never aspiring to the visual wit one might expect from a film about Hitchcock. Novelty is limited; the behind-the-scenes-of-a-classic angle was well-trodden by this point, and the film covers ground with a conventional, safe hand. The ending resolves the marital tension neatly and sentimentally, lacking the ambiguity or punch its subject might have demanded.