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Watch: An Exclusive Clip from Mark Cousins’s Forthcoming My Name is Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock, the director as well as self-analyzing critical observer, is evoked in the latest documentary from Mark Cousins, titled, appropriately, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock. During the pandemic lockdown, Cousins was invited by producer John Archer to make a film about the great director timed to the 100th anniversary of his debut film. Cousins set about watching all of Hitchcock’s films in chronological order, reading various critical book as well as works by his daughter and The Birds actress Tippi Hedren, all the while filling up notebooks of thoughts, reflections and details. That research and viewing produced a script, and voicing its first-person monologue is not some AI program but, uncannily, actor Alistair McGowan. Says Cousins, “In the opening credits I say, ‘Written and narrated by Alfred Hitchcock.’ This is not true of course – and in the end credits we tell the audience who really did the voice – but we want to create the illusion that Alfred Hitchcock finally decided, from beyond the grave, to take us on a guide through his remarkable body of work, one of the great image systems of the 20th Century, a labyrinth of pleasure and desire.”
Above watch an exclusive clip in which “Hitchcock” discusses the theme of escape in both his own life and the films Rear Window and The Birds. My Name is Alfred Hitchcock opens in theaters, including New York’s Quad Cinema, tomorrow from Cohen Media Group.
