We sat down with director Mark Cousins to talk about his new documentary My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock and find out if Mark will watch Barbie or Oppenheimer first.
“My name is Alfred Hitchcock.” Five of the most famous words perhaps in film history courtesy of the storied anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the 1960’s and now the title of Mark Cousins’ experimental inquisition into the iconic director’s remarkable filmography. Cousins’ journey with Hitchcock began like so many others’ – introduced to the master of suspense by an elder relative at an impressionable age to the showers and slashing knives of Psycho. “I must have been about eight or nine,” he smiles from his treasure trove of a flat in Edinburgh.
“I had seen the video nasties and it was just as scary as they were but it had something else. It had form and shape. I could see where the famous murder happened and how the rhythm of the film changed as a result. Thanks to seeing Psycho on a VHS player in Belfast, I started to comprehend cinema.”
The 1960 horror thriller left a profound impact on Cousins who has dedicated his life’s work to the power of cinema – whether that be through his much-loved Scene by Scene series for the BBC or pulling a portable cinema through the Scottish Highlands. He jokes: “When I was at school I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and I answered Alfred Hitchcock.”
Cousins – who’s past work includes The Story of Film: An Odyssey as well as I Am Belfast – is not the first documentarian to take on Hitchcock but he may be the first to speak to him from beyond the grave.
My Name is Alfred Hitchcock is narrated in the first person by the director himself who is being played with uncanny vocal accuracy by Alistair McGowan. The film is split up into six themes – escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment and height – while generally avoiding delving into well-covered topics such as suspense. The technique embeds you into the heart of his movies and finds rhythms between the pictures you never realised was there.
Cousins also makes a deliberate choice to bring attention to some of Hitchcock’s lesser known early films, such as The Ring, which aren’t as well documented as films such as Vertigo and The Birds. This isn’t a scene by scene film studies deconstruction or a Freudian delve into Hitchcock’s id but a playful, often humorous analysis of the director and what made his films tick that plays equally well for a long-time fan and someone completely new to Hitchcock’s filmography.
While Cousins’ documentary work often deals with the less mainstream avenues of cinema – his 2013 doc Here Be Dragons is a history of Albanian film for example – My Name is Alfred Hitchcock sees the filmmaker take on one of the most written and talked about subjects in all of 20th Century culture.
He admits taking on the documentary was influenced by Covid: “I think Covid has coloured this film because the sections on loneliness and fulfilment are quite Covid themes.”
Cousins also understood that to make a successful, comprehensive Hitchcock documentary, he had to have faith in his own unique voice which ironically meant largely sidelining his distinguished Belfastian purr and having Hitch narrate his own movie.
“I thought of the film I made about Orson Welles which was addressing him and that was well received, so I thought I could take it a step further and do Hitchcock in the first person. I thought of that within seconds really. It made the writing more intimate and also gives the opportunity for humour.”
Through making the documentary and rewatching all of Hitchcock’s films in order, Cousins was struck by the humanism at play in much of his work, especially in films such as The Farmer’s Wife and Rope, which is in contrast to more recent prevailing theories that painted the director as a cold-hearted manipulator.
Indeed, in the years since his death in 1980, Hitchcock has been the subject of much innuendo, rumour and accusation regarding his personal life, behaviour towards women and sexual preferences. Tippi Hedren accused him of sexually harassing her during production on Marnie (which actually features a lot in My Name is Alfred Hitchcock) but Cousins thinks a distorted opinion of Hitchcock now exists in the popular consciousness.
“A lot of people have a lot of opinions on Hitchcock. And I say, what’s the evidence? If you talk about women and misogyny, there’s no doubt he behaved appallingly toward Tippi Hedren. As soon as her book came out, I read it and was outraged and appalled on her behalf. I’m a passionate feminist so I go looking for other evidence where he might have treated other women badly but the evidence isn’t there.”
The Hitchcock Cousins knows – through his own friendships with Janet Leigh, Norman Lloyd and Sean Connery – is of a dinner party loving raconteur who had a very dry sense of humour.
Cousins and Connery became friends after the former James Bond sat down for an in depth interview on Scene by Scene to talk about some of his most memorable roles. For the show, they watched bits of Marnie (the rare Hitchcock sleeper hit) together and had a frank discussion about the film’s controversial rape scene. Cousins says Connery was “proud” of the film, his first big non-James Bond role and felt Hitchcock had a “mastery” over cinema.
My Name is Alfred Hitchcock is released on the same day as Barbie and Oppenheimer – Cousins self-deprecatingly jokes about how his little documentary is going to triumph over them both at the box-office – but he knows which one he’ll be seeing first.
“I’m probably going to see Barbie first,” he says,
“I can’t wait to see both and I suspect both are going to be very good. I’ve liked all of Christopher Nolan’s films and I’ve liked all of Greta Gerwig’s films. The trailers for Barbie look very good.”
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is in cinemas 21 July.
“My name is Alfred Hitchcock.” Five of the most famous words perhaps in film history courtesy of the storied anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the 1960’s and now the title of Mark Cousins’ experimental inquisition into the iconic director’s remarkable filmography. Cousins’ journey with Hitchcock began like so many others’ – introduced to the master of suspense by an elder relative at an impressionable age to the showers and slashing knives of Psycho. “I must have been about eight or nine,” he smiles from his treasure trove of a flat in Edinburgh.
Credit: Dogwoof
Psycho. Credit: Paramount Pictures
The Ring. Credit: Wardour Films
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is in cinemas 21 July.
