HBO’s The Girl, based on two chapters of Donald Spoto’s
Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies, concentrates on
The Birds and Marnie, the only two films Tippi Hedren made for Hitchcock and their
relationship. The whole thing suggests to any armchair-psychologist that Hitchcock fell victim to the same kind of obsession he filmed in Vertigo, where Jimmy
Stewart finds Kim Novak, a woman who looks like a woman he has loved and lost
and forces her to undergo changes to become the woman he loved.
Hitchcock was a genius filmmaker, but his treatment of women
like Hedren suggests an almost infantile need to control them. Today, he might
have been sued for sexual harassment. Back in the 1960s, people accepted his
actions as part of his quirks.
Hitchcock first sees Hedren in a commercial on television,
when his wife Alma suggests she has a pretty smile. Hitchcock traces her down
and puts her under contract for seven years. Her first attempts at acting are
embarrassingly bad, but Hitchcock is not deterred.
Toby Jones’ Hitchcock, inspired perhaps by Spoto’s insights, becomes a highly complex character,
who has a love/hate relationship with his wife Alma, tells dirty limericks to
Hedren knowing she will be offended, and literally punishes her with live birds
and breaking glass. At one point, he discusses with his assistant director his
loathing of his own overweight unattractive body, which may hint at the reason
he is so obsessed with an “ice-princess” he cannot have. Jones is quite
effective in the role, allowing us to wonder what makes the apparent misagonist
tick. Hitchcock once said that “actors should be treated like cattle.” Jones
shows his constant disdain for and attraction to his creation quite convincingly.
The most written about point in the production of The Birds was
the filming of the moment that Hedren’s character enters an attic and is
attacked by scores of birds. For an entire week, with take after take (beyond
40), Hedren has to protect herself from birds that are thrown at her and even
hooked onto her clothing. She had been led to believe the birds would only be
mechanical ones, but as she comes on the set she realizes live birds had been
in the planning from the beginning.
Sienna Miller is good, but she is not always as convincing as Jones. Miller, in
many respects, has the more difficult role in trying to make clear why any actress
would allow herself to be treated as she was. Hedren in Spoto’s book says she
was an inexperienced actress under contract to a powerful man who was convinced
by others that this is the way movies were made. The character has a confidant
to tells this to, and Peggy, Hitch’s secretary, and Alma. But, at times the
script needs to make her feelings clearer to allow us more sympathy for the character.
As difficult as acting in The Birds proved, Hedren's nightmare
continued when she was next cast in Hitchcock’s Marnie, as a sexually frigid
woman who is raped by her husband on her wedding night. By this point,
Hitchcock was making clear intentions that he wished to leave Alma and start a
new life with Hedren. After Hedren
totally rejects Hitchcock, she asks to be let out of her contract.
The film has convincing sets and costumes, and there are
times that the director seems to be paying homage to some of the other
Hitchcock films. When Hedren gets her hair dyed for Marnie, the shot looks like
it is quoting Hitchock’s Novak hair-dying scene in Vertigo. Care has been taken
to suggest the period. Penelope Wilton as Peggy Robertson, Hitch’s secretary,
and Imelda Staunton as Alma, give evidence of the long suffering that many
close to Hitchcock endured.
The Girl (HBO, 2012) ****
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