The BBC-HBO drama about Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren was fascinating, but it lacked the psychological drama only the man himself could have provided
The Girl, the BBC-HBO biopic that tells Tippi Hedren's side of the story![ext]()
about the making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, has upset a lot of the director's fans – but if ever there was a man likely to see the dramatic possibility of an inexperienced yet ambitious young woman being psychologically tortured by a powerful man in sexual thrall to her, it was him. One could even imagine Hitchcock taking such a woman and casting her to play that very role. It could be called Marnie. Or something.
The top complaint is that the film isn't "true". The contradictory opinions of others who worked with Hitchcock and Hedren have been sought – as if they could know better than Hedren what it was like to be her. Critics say Hitchcock didn't deliberately break the glass in a phone booth Hedren was filming in to punish her, or deliberately film take after take of her being swooped upon by live birds. Yet we know these things occurred. The inference is that there's a big difference between injuring someone accidentally or on purpose. True. But Hitchcock may have let Hedren believe the latter when the former was the case, for example. Life, and humans, aren't simple.
Yet, while fans insist nothing critical can be said of Hitchcock, Hedren can be destroyed with impunity. She says he wrecked her career because she rebuffed him sexually. Others say she's a bad actor, a fantasist, a liar. How odd that it's OK to say these things about an 82-year-old woman, but wrong to suggest this strange, brilliant man could have behaved less than impeccably towards the "cool blondes" his films objectify.
There was only one thing wrong with The Girl. There was no Hitchcock in the director's chair to make it the utterly compelling psychological drama that it could have been. Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.
The Girl, the BBC-HBO biopic that tells Tippi Hedren's side of the story
about the making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, has upset a lot of the director's fans – but if ever there was a man likely to see the dramatic possibility of an inexperienced yet ambitious young woman being psychologically tortured by a powerful man in sexual thrall to her, it was him. One could even imagine Hitchcock taking such a woman and casting her to play that very role. It could be called Marnie. Or something.The top complaint is that the film isn't "true". The contradictory opinions of others who worked with Hitchcock and Hedren have been sought – as if they could know better than Hedren what it was like to be her. Critics say Hitchcock didn't deliberately break the glass in a phone booth Hedren was filming in to punish her, or deliberately film take after take of her being swooped upon by live birds. Yet we know these things occurred. The inference is that there's a big difference between injuring someone accidentally or on purpose. True. But Hitchcock may have let Hedren believe the latter when the former was the case, for example. Life, and humans, aren't simple.
Yet, while fans insist nothing critical can be said of Hitchcock, Hedren can be destroyed with impunity. She says he wrecked her career because she rebuffed him sexually. Others say she's a bad actor, a fantasist, a liar. How odd that it's OK to say these things about an 82-year-old woman, but wrong to suggest this strange, brilliant man could have behaved less than impeccably towards the "cool blondes" his films objectify.
There was only one thing wrong with The Girl. There was no Hitchcock in the director's chair to make it the utterly compelling psychological drama that it could have been. Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.