"The Girl" premieres on HBO at 9:00pm (8:00pm Central) on Saturday, Oct. 20. It will also be available on HBO GO.
by Jeff Shannon
October, 1961: A New York fashion model on the verge of Hollywood stardom, 31-year-old Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) is invited to a celebratory lunch with legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) and his wife Alma (Imelda Staunton), who's also his long-time collaborator. A divorced single mother (of future actress Melanie Griffith, then four years old), Hedren is plucked from obscurity to star in "The Birds," Hitchcock's highly anticipated follow-up to his phenomenally successful 1960 thriller, "Psycho." After Alma sees her in a TV commercial ("I like her smile," she says to "Hitch"), she arranges a meeting. Secretly smitten, Hitchcock directs Hedren's screen test in his own Bel Air home and, shortly thereafter, offers a toast.
"'The Birds' is coming," says Hitchcock, ever the perfect pitchman for his movies. "It's going to be bigger, better, scarier -- my most ambitious movie ever. And we want you to star in it." Stunned by this sudden jolt of good fortune, Hedren beams with delighted surprise, regains her elegant composure and says, "I'll make you so proud of me. I'll be putty in your hands. You won't regret it, Hitch."
Oh, but she might. Initially, Hedren has no idea what she's gotten herself into. As HBO's biographical movie "The Girl" progresses, we witness her traumatic and ultimately brave endurance of misogynist abuse by "The Master of Suspense." She survives the film's notoriously grueling production, but that pales in comparison to her struggle fighting off unwanted advances from her manipulative director, seen here as a short, fat, impotent, lewd and pathetically lonely man who built a brilliant career out of his own psychological quirks and deeply subjugated sexual desires.
There's just one problem: "The Girl" is based on Spellbound By Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, the third book in author Donald Spoto's trilogy about Hitchcock. The first was The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, a straightforward survey of the director's films. The second was The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, still considered the definitive Hitchcock biography.
So what's the problem? It depends on who you want to believe. Spoto (credited as script consultant on "The Girl") has built his career around psychological assertions that Hitchcock was a self-loathing, sexually frustrated pervert obsessed with the "Hitchcock blondes" (among them Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Kim Novak, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, Eva Marie Saint, Doris Day and Hedren) who were the psychosexual focus of his best-known thrillers. These merciless portraits of Hitchcock are the fuel that propels "The Girl," which has already provoked protest from Hitchcock loyalists taking issue with the film's Spoto-based point of view.
And yet, "The Girl" was produced with the enthusiastic endorsement of Hedren, who is thanked in the film's end credits, agreed to promotional interviews, and has long maintained that she was terrorized by Hitchcock before, during and after the filming of "The Birds" and its less popular follow-up, 1964's "Marnie" -- in which Hedren's character is raped not once but twice (once off-screen) by her own conniving husband (played by Sean Connery, a freshly minted movie star after his debut as James Bond in "Dr. No").
"Save Hitchcock" protests notwithstanding, "The Girl," almost in spite of itself, is a mesmerizing film that portrays "Hitch" as a sexual predator who abused his power, effectively ruining Hedren's career after she repeatedly rebuffed his desperate sexual advances. Alma (played by Staunton with sympathetic strength and long-suffering dignity) helplessly witnesses her husband's indiscretions, even going so far as to apologize to Hedren for his abhorrent behavior.
Co-produced by the BBC, directed by Julian Jarrold (who directed the first film in the "Red Riding" trilogy, the Benedict Cumberbatch "Brideshead Revisited," as well as "Kinky Boots" and "Becoming Jane") and adapted from Spellbound by Beauty by fellow BBC-TV veteran Gwyneth Hughes, "The Girl" balances its cynically speculative content with tantalizing recreations of Hitchcock and Hedren at work. With South African locations doubling for "The Birds" setting in Bodega Bay, California, "The Girl" is steeped in satisfying behind-the-scenes detail, including Hitch's script-sessions with novelist-turned-screenwriter Evan Hunter (who adapted Daphne du Maurier's short story) and clever glimpses of Hitchcock's mastery of movie magic. An early scene shows Hitchcock playfully demonstrating the "swaying lovebirds" effect (the most amusing sight-gag in "The Birds"), and later we watch Hedren endure minor injuries while shooting the film's terrifying phone-booth scene, when Hitchcock endangered the actress with breaking glass and a fake attacking seagull. Eavesdropping on Hedren's flirtatious interaction with first assistant director Jim Brown (Carl Beukes), Hitchcock's petty jealousy is unleashed as retaliatory cruelty.
All of this makes for great drama, for better and worse, and both Toby Jones and Sienna Miller make it greater by giving uncannily convincing performances. Aided by judicious use of prosthetic makeup, Jones flawlessly recreates Hitchcock's one-of-a-kind vocal inflections and portly, slow-moving physique. In what is arguably her finest performance to date, Miller plays the quintessential Hitchcock blonde with steely determination and steadfast integrity. Both actors transcend mere mimicry, inhabiting their characters with consummate precision. For its efficiently plotted 90-minute running time, "The Girl" is never less than fascinating.
In its own way, the film also pays respectful homage to Hitchcock as a master filmmaker. In addition to the painstaking recreations of Hitchcock's working methods, Jarrold finds clever opportunities to honor Hitchcock's cinematic legacy. When Hedren takes a much-needed shower after a grueling day on the set of "The Birds," Jarrold includes a brief insert shot of water spraying from the shower head, precisely matching the same shot that precedes Janet Leigh's infamous murder in "Psycho." For Hitchcock fans, these are moments to savor.
Those same fans will analyze "The Girl" according to their own perceptions of Hitchcock, but there's no denying that the film balances its darker speculation with convincing period detail and, strictly speaking, a fair amount of film-historical accuracy. We're in "Mad Men" territory here, and the film is rich with Kennedy-era detail, not only in its production design, but also in capturing the early-'60s sexual dynamics that placed women at a subservient disadvantage to powerful men.
Even its detractors will have to admit that "The Girl" is great fodder for debate and discussion. It's also arriving shortly before the theatrical release (on Jan. 10, 2013) of "Hitchcock", which focuses on the controversial production of "Psycho," starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role. The film's trailers hint at the tidal wave of comparisons to come: Both Hopkins and Jones have been praised for previous portrayals of real-life figures (Hopkins as Oliver Stones's "Nixon" and Jones as Truman Capote in "Infamous"), and now we have two superior actors applying distinctly different approaches to portraying one of the most complicated and celebrated directors in the history of film.
It's not a contest. Both films and performances will be judged on their merits. Until then, "The Girl" is must-see TV for anyone who's been thrilled by the Master of Suspense. Accurate or not, it succeeds as convincing speculation bolstered by excellence on both sides of the camera. We can only wonder if Hitchcock would recognize himself in Hughes' script and Jones' portrayal.
Jones was fantastic as Capote in 'Infamous'. Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal in 'Capote' comes in a very distant second for me. 'The Girl' should be worth checking out.
I can't speak to 'The Birds' but I do remember in Evan Hunter's book "Hitch and Me" he writes about not wanting to work on 'Marnie' because of the rape scene. Hitch's response was that the rape scene was the reason he *wanted* to do the movie.
I do not have HBO, which means I will have to wait for "The Girl" to pop-up on Netflix or in a DVD bargain bin. Frankly, I'm happy I won't have to be one of the lemmings rushing to see this tripe. Donald Spoto has made a nice living writing questionable books in which he trashes numerous movie stars, as well as Alfred Hitchcock. Spoto seems to consider himself Sigmund Freud, but the truth of the matter is that his books are laughable and not rooted in genuine psychological reality. His breathless purple prose is rarely believable. Mr. Hitchcock had a reputation for telling corny and bawdy jokes, but that is hardly a brush with which to paint him as some kind of pervert. As for Tippi Hedren, give me a break. The worst thing about both "The Birds" and "Marnie" is her inability to act. She's lucky she got to be in two movies with that tinny voice. Seems to me that she's just bitter that she couldn't build a career after Mr. Hitchcock got tired of her. He knew a pig-in-a-poke and jettisoned her for Julie Andrews, who he cast in "Torn Curtain."
It's no secret Hitchcock had his issues. You can see them on screen and in more than one film; his pathology is often on display. And as was the case recently with Clint Eastwood and "the chair" incident - there's the work you do - and then there's YOU.
You know? A person.
I think fans often find hard to separate "what they love" from the person who made it and for projecting their admiration; hero worship. And imo, the extent to which Hitchcock was able to sexually harass Tippi Hedron at the time and get away with it, owes to a combination of fear, denial or self-interest on the part of those around him, and for needing to protect what you've invested yourself in. And why no one has made a film about it until now.
The patriarchy defends itself, first. Followed by women taught to enable it.
I think Hitchcock channeled his issues onto film in a really creative way. I think he possessed a sharp eye in terms of composition, and understood Freudian psychology sufficiently to use it to his advance when building suspense. And I think he should be applauded, but not for how he achieved it.
In the same way "The Passion of Joan of Arc" directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer is actually a testament to the emotional stamina of Renée Jeanne Falconetti, more so than Dryer's brilliance as a director. At least I can argue a case for that. She's the reason the film is a masterpiece. Not because Dryer showed "masterly technique" in driving her to the brink while the camera was rolling. He was a perfectionist intent on getting what he wanted.
He didn't want to film someone acting, in other words. He wanted to film real pain and suffering - but not his own. He used a proxy, instead.
And emotionally, speaking, I find that approach too pragmatism. I can't embrace. When it comes to art, I think only the arrogant believe the ends justify the means.
As I also suspect he had his issues, too...
"Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Scanian maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a married Danish farmer living in Sweden who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in orphanages until his adoption by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie (née Olsen). His adoptive parents were emotionally distant and his childhood was largely unhappy. He later recalled that his parents "constantly let me know that I should be grateful for the food I was given and that I strictly had no claim on anything, since my mother got out of paying by lying down to die." But he was a highly intelligent school student, who left home and formal education at the age of sixteen. He dissociated himself from his adoptive family, but their teachings were to influence the themes of many of his films." - wikipedia
None of which sets a prescient. The world is full of people carrying around baggage; whether you can see it or not. And to the extent in leeches into their work, varies.
All of which is to say, I have no trouble believing that Hitchcock was guilty at times of behaving badly. I don't doubt for a second that Tippi Hedron is telling the truth when speaking of past events.
My only issue is the sacred-cow like status others sometimes afford creative men and for seeing only what they like about their work.
And I think "The Girl" speaks to that.
(Warning: Spoilers for "Marnie" in this post)
I only remember one rape scene in Marnie - during the couple's ill-fated honeymoon at sea. When does the second rape scene occur?
I've never seen the Birds but I've seen Marnie twice. I find it a fascinating, if deeply flawed, film. Marnie is considered one of Hitchcock's greatest failures, and yet many of Hedren's scenes still spur animated discussion today.