'My Name is Alfred Hitchcock' Wows Critics

         On October 25, 2024, Cohen Media Group released 'My Name is Alfred Hitchcock', which has received rave reviews and a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing. In the film, "A century after the debut of Alfred Hitchcock's first feature, he remains one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. But how does his vast body of work and legacy hold up in today's world? Mark Cousins, the award-winning filmmaker behind Women Make Film, The Storms of Jeremy Thomas, and The Story of Film: A New Generation, tackles this question and looks at the auteur with a new and radical approach: through the use of his own voice. As Hitchcock rewatches his films, we are taken on an odyssey through his vast career -- his vivid silent films, the legendary films of the 1950s and 60s and his later works -- in playful and revealing ways." Read the full review round-up below.

       Todd McCarthy of Deadline Hollywood Daily notes, "My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is a frisky, free-wheeling, deeply informed salute from one very clever British chap to another who was also rather more than that, one who made his first film 97 years ago and whose work is still widely seen and known." Adding, "Many of the films are discussed at some considerable length, for their fundamental strength as well as for their quirks. “I realized movies are a trickster medium,” “Hitch” remarks at one point. “I am a trickster, you see. I wanted to straddle commerce and art, Murnau and D.W. Griffith.” In the final scene of his career, in Family Plot, Hitchcock had Barbara Harris wink at the camera—“a trickster’s wink.”

Photo by Toni Cuenca on Unsplash

       Sheri Linden of Hollywood Reporter says, "Other than one of his trademark cameos, in Marnie, there are no moving images of Hitchcock himself; instead, the doc puts a few stills of the auteur in rotation. Any suggestion of TV newsmagazine-style repetition is soon dispelled by Cousins’ inquisitive camera, pulling in tighter, and by the keen liveliness of the deceased filmmaker’s voiceover. Carried along by Hitchcock’s narration, we peer into his photographic portrait, and into his films: the “most serious” (The Wrong Man), the lesser-known silents (“You probably didn’t see it,” Hitchcock/McGowan says of 1927’s Downhill, aka When Boys Leave Home), the shimmering black-and-white nail-biters of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s (Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, Psycho) and the immortal Technicolor dreamscapes (Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds)." Continuing, "As “Hitchcock” notes, his movies have been analyzed every which way and back again. Cousins’ fresh approach divides the work into six sections, an elegant capsule melding existential questions with the practical challenges and opportunities of big-screen storytelling. The first chapter, Escape, is the longest, and from there the film moves through Desire, Loneliness, Time and Fulfillment, culminating with Height — as in an elevated sense of perspective. It’s a damn good outline for a life, let alone a compelling blueprint for exploring the oeuvre."