Tonight's Movie: My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (2022) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

The documentary MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK (2022) is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber and Cohen Media Group in the "Contemporary Classics" line.

I use the word "documentary" advisedly, inasmuch as it has a phony central conceit: While the opening credits assert the film is "Written and Voiced by Alfred Hitchcock," that actually isn't true.

Alastair McGowan voices the famed director, from a script by director Mark Cousins which incorporates some of Hitchcock's statements through the years, mixed with Cousins' own ideas.

The ersatz "Hitchcock" narrates clips from his films grouped around themes such as escape, desire, loneliness, and so on. The use of "height" as one of the themes was especially clever, causing the viewer to contemplate just how many times that's an issue in Hitchcock movies.

Like most classic film fans I'm a great admirer of Hitchcock's movies, which is one of the reasons I wanted to see this documentary, despite being aware reviews were all over the place; I figured I should see it for myself.

I greatly enjoyed the way many of the clips were put together; for instance, the "escape" theme includes not only characters thinking about literal escapes, with scenes such as Robert Cummings fingering a book titled ESCAPE in SABOTEUR (1942), but also contemplation of things like the "escapes" reflected by art on James Stewart's bookshelves in REAR WINDOW (1954).

There are also interesting groups of clips showing some of Hitchcock's cinematic tricks, such as walking through a door "into" a movie, while the viewer never sees the door close.

A Hitchcock fan will greatly enjoy the clips, but that's also one of the documentary's problems: It assumes familiarity with the master's work at the outset. Those of us who know the movies well have no trouble with the quick cuts jumping from movie to movie, but I wonder just how meaningful the documentary would be for those who are new to the great director's work?

I was frankly never comfortable with the concept of a faux Hitchcock "narrating" the film. Certainly, Hitchcock's own movies had clever bits of comedy, including dark humor, scattered throughout, and I suspect Cousins was trying to emulate that tone to an extent. However, in my opinion it's too cute by half here when "Hitchcock" refers to his own death, more cheesy than entertaining.

Similarly, the Hitchcock actor's over-familiarity, referring to his stars as "Jimmy" and "Hank," just comes off oddly.

The other issue with the narration is that 120 minutes was a very long time to listen to that uniquely accented (to this American) voice. Granted, I have imperfect hearing, but it was a strain focusing on it for a couple hours.

Finally, the film has very repetitive use of stills of Hitchcock, not to mention some other odd shots of modern actors cut in for no apparent reason, other than to be "artistic." Seeing the same stills over and over again gets rather old after two hours.  Perhaps there were licensing issues preventing the use of more photographs, but in that case perhaps a faster editing pace and fewer photos would have helped.

In the end I'd say that MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK was an interesting experiment which may be worth the time for Hitchcock fans to see once, to enjoy the clips and glean some of the more interesting points, but overall it doesn't really work.

The Blu-ray print and sound quality is very nice. The disc does have autoplay trailers which must be fast-forwarded past to get to the main menu; hitting "menu" on my remote did not work for this disc.

Extras include trailers; McGowan's voice test audio; an interview with the director; graphics tests; and introductions by Cousins of SABOTEUR, NOTORIOUS, and ROPE. The case includes reversible cover art.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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