The Girl

Overall a decent film but lots of mistakes. All of the major scenes from The Birds only show one camera being used in one take. The phone booth scene, the attic scene for instance. One scene shows Hedren entering the upstairs bedroom already bloodied before she is attacked. The scene where she arrives at Mitch's with the Lovebirds is highly exaggerated. In the film, the ladder is maybe two or three rungs. In The Girl it is like climbing the Empire State Building. The first scene in Marnie at the railroad station was filmed in San Jose not on a soundstage. No biggie. Overall an okay film but could have been better. Now, in regards to Tippi Hedren's allegations. So many people are angry with her for daring to accuse the mighty Hitchcock of sexual harassment. For stabbing him in the back after all that he did for her. For being the only actress who had problems with him. For waiting so long to "come out" with her accusations. Back in 1985 I had a phone conversation with Diane Baker (Hedren's co-star in Marnie) on radio station KGO in San Francisco. Curious about her experience's working with Hitchcock I asked her what it was like. She immediately spent about ten minutes talking about Hitchcock's mistreatment of Tippi Hedren during the filming. She pulled no punches. I had no reason not to believe her. She was there. She saw it. In recent interviews she goes so far as to say she did not like Hitchcock at all. Those who accuse Hedren of being a liar need to add Diane Baker to their list. I believe them both.

As Total Film magazine said of this one-off drama, "it amounts to nothing less than a wholesale character assassination". They were right – it makes Albert Goldman's biography of John Lennon appear hagiographic.

While it looks great and Sienna Miller is fine as Hedren and Jones captures Hitch's voice well, The Girl is a narrow and nasty portrayal of the world's greatest film director. In its attempt to construct a drama it forgets some important points: people often have to suffer for their art; Alfred Hitchcock was a film director who knew his audience better than anyone, his understanding of the human condition was deep, and he realised that the thing that mattered most was the experience that the audience would derive from his work. If it meant discomfort and long hours on the set, that was a price worth paying – there's no room for fluffy dressing gowns and tea and biscuit breaks when you're trying to create a masterpiece, something that might last for centuries.

To suggest that Hitch unexpectedly sent a model bird crashing through a telephone box window just to terrify and "punish" Hedren, as opposed to being a desire to frighten the wits out of the audience, is absurd. The shoot of The Birds had been meticulously planned for – literally – years, and in any case, why would Hitch risk harming his leading lady's features? The greatest of people are endowed with light and shade, and possess the ability to view human existence from deep and differing positions. Hitchcock was one of these people. This greatness is something to be lauded – not bemoaned and belittled, as was the case with The Girl.

The Girl (2012)

** (out of 4)

HBO movie about the working relationship between Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) and Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) while making THE BIRDS and MARNIE. The film focuses in on Hitchcock's mental and sexual abuse of the actress who blames the director for her career never taking off. THE GIRL has hit with all sorts of controversy with people attacking it for trying to ruin Hitchcock's legacy and others attacking Hedren for coming up with this stories after years of talking about how great the director was. I guess we'll never really know what happened between the two but it's pretty clear by watching this movie that it didn't make for any entertainment. THE GIRL could have made for an interesting psychological thriller but what we get is pretty much a gossip film that has nothing going for it. It seems like the only thing this film tried to do was show Hitchcock as an ugly man both physically and in the way that he treated women. Watching this film you learn absolutely nothing about Hitchcock or this so-called obsession with Hendren. Did Hitch do this to other actresses? Why was Hitch so obsessed with Hedren? These are two important things that are never mentioned here and the only thing we are told is that this happened. THE GIRL is so short on any sort of information that the entire thing just comes across as an attempt to show a legend as a pervert. Again, if this really happened then I have no problem with a movie being made about it. The problem is that director Julian Jarrold has delivered a lifeless, boring mess that just doesn't add up to anything. Both Jones and Miller do what they can with decent performances but neither can overcome the screenplay. The best thing going in the film is the make-up job done to Jones. THE GIRL might lure people in wanting to see what all the controversy is about but I can't see too many sticking around to the end.

As most film buffs are aware, Alfred Hitchcock was a known voyeur and that kink was evident in most of his films and the Director was able to channel that obsession for creative and successful movies. The art form itself is genuinely, by nature, produced to satisfy the voyeuristic tendencies of the audience. No one knew that better than Hitch.

It is also known that he liked blonds with a cool demeanor. But to just what extent he used his leverage over these actresses was not very clear. According to Tippi Hedren, if we are to believe her accounts, this made for HBO Movie is truth told to power (posthumously).

This is an old Hollywood story that used to be referred to as "the casting couch". Here we have an impotent Hitch groping and demanding obedience "available to me in all i desire", a determined, sad old man, that uses his on set Direction to "torture" her with repeated, dangerous and humiliating takes of a scene in The Birds (1963).

But she is a strong and resilient woman who would make another movie, Marnie (1964) with Alfie and then fade to black. The movie makes its points in a straightforward, blemishes and all, account that is well acted by all and, surprisingly, without any flourishes that made Hitchcock a legendary film maker.

It is a sympathetic portrayal of a beautiful woman and a flawed, fat and ugly, powerful man. A Beauty and the Beast story. Not a pleasant situation about an unpleasant, but talented man.

The Girl is an interesting movie about Hitchcock's obsession with Tippi Hedren as they made two movies together. It's stylishly made, with good performances. It is focused very much on Hitchcock's cruelty to Hedren.

My main objection to this movie is that its focus makes it rather unbalanced. Hedren herself says this. She says working with Hitchcock was great at first, and while the movie portrays her as dealing with one indignity after another, she says this was only really a problem toward the end of Marnie. It might have been interesting to see more of Hitchock's process - I liked the scene where he helps her work on her lines - but it's a short movie and they had a story to tell.

What is more interesting than the movie is its detractors here. While some people just don't find The Girl interesting, the vast majority seem to dislike it because they don't believe it. Some reviews will even say they're not invested in Hitchcock's reputation, but then follow it up by saying they don't believe this happened.

First off, the movie is based on information from a book by a respected biography writer, based on what he was told by both Hedren and those who worked with her. And Hitchcock was certainly a dark, obsessive, and sometimes cruel (witness his vicious "practical jokes") person. His movies are about obsessions and cruelty, so it would hardly be surprising if he acted poorly with his actress.

Yet, many of the movie's critics express outrage that Hitchcock's name is being besmirched. They say Hedren lied; that she is just trying to scapegoat Hitchcock for her lack of major successes after the Hitchcock films. They say she couldn't act. They say she should have been grateful that Hitchcock gave her a career.

There is a phrase I don't like, because it sounds extremist and harsh and overly politically correct, but that I increasingly realize accurately describes something, and that is "rape culture," the idea that sexual harassment and attacks on women are so ingrained in our society that they aren't even seen as abnormal. The reactions to this movie seem to me examples of this. What is the difference between saying Hedren lied about Hitchcock and the claims that a woman lies about being raped? What does her acting ability have to do with anything? (And what are people basing their assessment on? I suspect most of us have only seen her in two movies, made by a director who got exactly the performances he wanted from his actors).

Many people are saying,essentially, "he didn't do it, and if he did do it, she deserved it."

Look, I understand that people feel a need to defend great artists, but many great artists are not especially great people. That's inevitable; art often comes from a strange place. Don't attack the victim because you think the aggressor was a cool dude.