Alfred Hitchcock Speaks from the Grave
- Antony Cirocco
- Mar 17
- 5 min read
Film Title: “My Name is Alfred Hitchcock”
Dir: Mark Cousins
Release Date: Sept 2022
Review by Antony Cirocco
“My Name is Alfred Hitchcock” is a documentary by writer and director Mark Cousins. It was first released in September of 2022.
This film is a historical revisiting of the career of one of cinema’s greatest auteurs, Alfred Hitchcock. It features predominantly archival footage of Hitchcock’s many works, including some of his earlier black-and-white films. It features a voiceover by Alistair McGowan.
Cousins takes the audience on a journey through the life’s work of Hitchcock. He weaves a thread with various themes that appear to connect Hitchcock's films. Using the voice of McGowan, Cousins breaks down the meaning of Hitchcock's work, analysing various scenes and production techniques and film theories are fleshed out. Rather than just an accompanying voiceover, though, McGowan (a comical impressionist and actor by trade) replicates Hitchcock’s voice to create an intimacy between the original auteur himself and the audience, which has an air of authenticity until…
This film is an archival treasure chest featuring the best work of Alfred Hitchcock, broken down and examined, and for many new to film theory, shedding new light on the master's work. It features a voice-over that sounds very much like the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock…but it’s not him, he died on the 29th of April 1980. This film was released in 2022, and unless there is some witchcraft afoot, either something has gone pear-shaped, or ethical boundaries have been crossed…or have they? This film, born out of COVID lockdown, as a documentary is a great example of a filmmaker beset by limiting boundaries on all sides, finding a new way to tell a story about one of the greatest film innovators of all time.
As Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations”. This film reinvents the voiceover. Here, the voiceover is a construction, a fabrication. It’s very un-documentary-like. Factual films focus on eye-witness accounts, the divulging of facts, holding a mirror up to society and all that jazz. Here however, Cousins staring down a lockdown, cut off from the regular means of production, backed into a corner like a church mouse staring down a feline oppressor named COVID 19, tears up the filmmakers handbook and says…fuck it, lets just tell a story and get as close to the facts as possible, with a heaping helping of film theory to help fill in the gaps and disguise the fact that the Auteur himself, Sir Alfred Hitchcock had died some 20 years earlier.
If you extract the voiceover, well performed by McGowan, this documentary, for all intents and purposes, is a well-crafted reflexive piece that leans heavily on the works of Hitchcock for its bona fides. His work (Hitchcock’s) is beautiful at the time of release. Hitchcock was one of the greatest directors of his time, and the body of work speaks volumes about his mastery of the form. In this sense, Cousins has excelled in directing the audience as to where to look for the brilliance and the magic of pure cinema that Hitchcock created.
This leads to the question, though, who is Cousins? And why is he the right person to tell this story? What authority is he to edit, compile and retell (in the words of Hitchcock, no less) the story of what he made and how. Cousins is not well known in Australia, but with a bit of research, one can see that Cousins is an experienced and seasoned film critic, theorist and documentary director. His television work dates back to 1997, when he interviewed David Lynch and Martin Scorsese in TV Series “Scene by Scene”. He went on to make dozens of TV shows, including in 2011 “The Story of Film: An Odyssey” and multiple documentaries, collecting nominations and awards along the way.
When making a documentary, whilst trying to remain honest and factual, inevitably, along the way, style and taste decisions are made. There is art in documentary; it’s not just a mirror sometimes, there are other matters to consider, movement, mood, emotion, all these are at the disposal of a documentary maker just as they would be for a director of scripted drama, the two are not mutually exclusive. A seasoned journalist may beg to differ, but documentary is not strictly the realm of the stoic expository storyteller; sometimes, liberties can be taken and often they have to.
The question here is…did the voiceover go too far? There are moments where the “voice” refers to mobile phones etc and I would suggest that maybe these moments provide an unnecessary distraction to what is a good quality alternative documentary experience, celebrating the work of one of cinema's greatest and earlier innovators. Personally, McGowan's incessant chortling, whilst maybe authentic (I never heard Hitchcock chortle to be honest), but by the end of the two hours it had gone too far. Maybe he thought it was some kind of method acting that he brought to the voiceover, but to me, it went too far. The dialogue editor let a few too many through to the keeper there.
This film is excellent, and if you are after a high-quality film theory lecture or just an avid film buff experience, then you will really enjoy this in a darkened living room with some mixed nuts and an ice-cold beer. It’s engaging, and most likely you will walk away from the experience more knowledgeable and better prepared to rewatch Hitchcock's films with a multiplicity of things to look for. However, that voiceover will distract your subconscious and leave you, the viewer with a feeling like you have been buzzed by an inauthentic blow fly the entire time you have watched the film.
This film is a worthwhile experience. I am a massive fan of Hitchcock, so I watched this twice. You will get used to the voiceover, and if you lean into it, you will really enjoy the experience.
My only concern is that this film paves the way for a new era of AI-generated voiceovers of filmmakers or maybe actors speaking from the dead. AI voiceovers were not available when this documentary was made, but there is nothing to say that it’s not available to unscrupulous filmmakers angling for a cheaper alternative to a human voice; I am sure they are out there.
For me, this film is a 6 out of 10, it would be 5, but the voiceover is innovative enough to spark some extra interest.
Review by Antony Cirocco
Check out the film trailer on youtube here -
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