The Girl

I stumbled across this one day while scanning through the channels. I saw "Hitchcock" in the description, so I decided to have a look. Now I'll admit, I don't know all that much about Hitchcock. I know he's a great director, but I know next to nothing about his personal life or any controversy that may have lead to this movie. Instead I focused on the movie itself. After watching, I decided to look it up, where I came across the rather large controversy that this film has created. So here's my humble take on the film.

"The Girl" is a brilliant film from a mechanical standpoint. The acting is brilliant. Toby Jones sounds almost IDENTICAL to Hitchcock. It was really quite eerie to listen to the two. He seemed to capture the mannerisms from the director quite well. Sienna Miller was okay, but was a bit dry in some parts. Otherwise it was a fine group of actors. Likewise, directing, cinematography and editing were all exceptional, so why does this film fail?

A question I have instead of all the "is this a true story?" is, if you have all of the makings of a great film-a great cast, a great director, great camera-work-why base the story on such a controversial and doubtful series of events? Why not use the tools you have to make a biopic of sorts? This is what baffles me. If this film had followed a different story, it would probably have a much better rating. Everything points to a successful film EXCEPT the story, so why do it?

I suppose this is the problem with film these days. People are more concerned about the shock factor than an actual quality film. It's a shame too, because this could have been much, much better and free from controversy.

Despite wonderful performances by Toby Jones and Sienna Miller, "The Girl," purporting to be the story of Hitchcock's obsession with Tippi Hedren, was tough going.

I'm getting a little tired of reading on the message board that Tippi Hedren "needed the money." I guess I'm unclear as to how she's cashed in on this story. Did she write the book? The screenplay? She gets a "thanks" in the credits. I have a thanks on a film's credit and I didn't get a cent. If she acted as a consultant, I doubt for a TV movie it would help her wildlife preserve much.

Hitchcock fans know several things: filming "The Birds" was a miserable experience for Hedren; Alfred Hitchcock was a brilliant, complicated man who probably had some sexual hangups; and Alfred Hitchcock had fallen for other leading ladies. However, those leading ladies remained friends with him (Bergman and Kelly) so one wonders if the way he is depicted in this film is correct. If someone tried to ram his tongue down my throat or recited dirty limericks to me or asked me to touch him, I'd have gone running.

The screenplay was criticized by one of the people who worked on the film and was interviewed, so you already know it's sensationalized.

In this version, Hitchcock falls for Tippi Hedren and makes her life a living hell after she rejects him. I have no idea if this happened or not. Toby Jones has again proved his gifts as a mimic - his Hitchcock is perfection, just as his Capote was. Sienna Miller is beautiful and strangely resembles Janet Leigh in this film! She did a good job playing a vapid actress.

The problem with the film is that it's skewed toward Hedren instead of telling a story in a balanced manner. The second problem is that even at 90 minutes it's too long with scene after scene of Tippi sighing over her bad treatment or someone commiserating with her over her bad treatment and scene after scene of Hitchcock staring at her and then plotting another way to torture her.

I had the pleasure of transcribing interviews that Donald Spoto did on his important book on Alfred Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius. I can testify that he worked for years on this book and left no stone unturned. I remember one part of the book, where Hitchcock is through with Hedren as an actress, saying, "She did the unimaginable -- she mentioned my WEIGHT." They didn't get along, that's evident. Hitchcock here is presented as a sicko whack job. Were that the case, he wouldn't have had so many people -- so many women -- working with him over and over again, which they did.

I suggest to people that if they want to know the whole story that they read Spoto's two books, Spellbound, about Hitchcock and his leading ladies, and The Dark Side of Genius. He is given to psychobabble but believe me, it's more interesting material than this. And if any of this is in his writing, you can believe it.

We are to believe in this movie that Hitchcock was hurtful and insulting to everyone, that he tortured, threw himself at, and belittled Tippi Hedren to such an extent that she made a second film with him. Yeah, that's what I would have done.

I'm guessing there might be a little more to this story that would possibly not present Ms. Hedren in the best light. I admire her very much for her work on her wildlife preserve, and in interviews, she always comes across as a lovely woman. That doesn't mean she is as shown in this film.

Hitchcock had his demons. Somehow Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Teresa Wright, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, and Barbara Harris got through it. Granted, they didn't have birds attacking them. They did, however, admire the genius behind the films.

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.

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 title should warn you, and if it doesn't then the poster should warn you with the proud foreground stance of the female lead. This isn't a movie for Hitchcock fans. It's a wish-fulfillment movie for women-- in particular, for those who would like to daydream of effortlessly becoming a movie star, beloved by all (as well as being a successful mother who needs no husband to depend on), while maintaining integrity and never buckling under the harassment of piggish men. It even ends by reassuring the daydreamer that given the choice, the wise woman chooses not to pay the price of enduring stardom. Unfortunately, this beauty-and-the-beast tale takes the guise of a true story, and it renders Alfred Hitchcock as not just fat but deformed-- and devoid of understandable motivation. Moreover, there is nothing gradual, subtle, or devious to make his harassment of Tippi Hedren interesting. In a better movie-- a Hitchcockian, gaslight movie-- we would wonder at the beginning whether Hedren were imagining things, and we might even wonder after the end. In this one, though, the story is given no overlay of ambiguity; on the contrary, it is given extra bluntness beyond the known factual version.