Filmmaker Mark Cousins returns with My Name is Alfred Hitchcock, a new documentary that practically and plainly takes us through the filmography of the late, great Alfred Hitchcock, as if the director was talking us through it himself. This altered verité approach is an intriguing one, and while it takes some moments to settle into, the content and quality of Hitch’s work – and his undeniable influence on modern culture and filmmaking – makes for an absorbing insight.

In many senses, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock retraces and reexamines his film legacy right through his entire career. With last year marking the hundred-year anniversary of the director’s first feature, we’re embedded into a journey of his extraordinary talent, from his first silent films such as 1925’s The Pleasure Garden, as well as The Ring, Downhill and The Farmer’s Wife, right through to 1929’s Blackmail, which in affect became the first British sound feature – after originally starting production as a silent film itself – and then eventually onto the likes of Notorious, The Paradine Case, Rope, Rear Window, The Birds, North by Northwest, Marnie and Torn Curtain – to name just a collection.

The analysis of his history is broken down essentially into six chapters, crossing the worlds and emotions of Escape; Desire; Loneliness; Time; Fulfilment and Height – and each section picking out moments from his films from the 1930s to 1976’s Family Plot, as they entwine and examine the different subjects, with all their troubled and exciting ways. With the narrator being the ghost (in a sense) of Hitchcock, it could play daftly into parody but there’s something about Cousins script, and his knowledge I’d feel, that keeps it informative, and even playful, exactly as the director liked his films to be.

Whatever your overall familiarity of Hitchcock and his filmmaking method, there’s an awful lot to learn here and while we might not completely know if these would be his exact words about his own process, it’s clear the research is here and we know enough from the man himself in regard to the mystery and joy that he had in making his movies – and how many other directors can boast of decades of success, let alone their continual impact today, as new film lovers discover his work. There’s also a welcome moment for his wife, Alma Reville, and her importance to him, even if his other obsessions are known about today.

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock doesn’t just talk about his films on the surface level either, it reveals his tricks of the story, and the subtle (or direct) use of camera angles, set design and lighting, and it also explains how his suspicious characters would love to hide in plain sight. I also particularly the reoccurring method of using doorways for both metaphor and narrative progression, from bringing the audience directly inside the story, so they would watch the character on the big screen try and escape their lives, as the person watching might even be trying to do themselves – something you’d be brazen not to admit to, because who doesn’t love the drifting away with the cinema, or enjoying the fantasy life beyond, from the doldrums of your office desk.  

This is an odyssey of insight that may somewhat steer the documentary towards one for the film purists, as it’s somewhat of an essay in filmic form, but I found it buried itself in my brain with a very different approach that dares to be bold. It’s analytical and excellent, simplistic and complex, technical, and also surprising. Sit back in the dark, alone or with a fellow film fan and let it melt into your thoughts, maybe with a slightly chilled glass of Montrachet wine to further flavour the escapism.

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock is in cinemas and On Demand now: https://dogwoof.com/my-name-is-alfred-hitchcock