Via frenchani: Anthony Hopkins, having marathoned all of Breaking Bad wrote a fan letter to Bryan Cranston, who played Walter White, with kind regards to the entire production team. The entire text is here, and as a tribute from one actor to another wonderful to read. (I especially appreciate he took the time to praise the work of the other actors, scriptwriters, camera people etc. as well that made Breaking Bad so great.) I mean, as frenchani said, Bryan Cranston presumably knows this was the role of a lifetime and that he was splendid in it, but it still has to be extra sweet to have the likes of Anthony Hopkins, who not only as an acting legend himself but worked with Olivier, O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn way back when, declare: Your performance as Walter White was the best acting I have seen - ever.

Actors are so often reviled and derided as egomaniacs, and I'm sure some of them are, plus it's not a profession you get far in if you don't accumulate a thick skin, ellbows and survival power. (In the mostly fluffy My week with Marilyn, there is a great moment in which Olivier-played-by-Branagh says, re: Marilyn, to adoring Colin: "I wouldn't buy the little girl lost act if I were you. She's a successful actress. It's the hardest job in the world.") But as with other artists (musicians, writers), I've always found they can also be honestly thrilled by someone else's work and share that, and I'm not talking about promotion interviews (wherein actors working in the same about to be released film have to declare their co-actors are just wonderful etc.) but spontanous and uncalled for praise like this. Reading it is improving my mood to no end right now, because before that I've come across several comments in several of my fandoms that reminded me again we're all watching different shows and everyone on the internet is wrong and respond so very differently to what they offer.

So what was I doing when not scribbling tales inspired by The Miller's Daughter (and, you know, the miller's daughter, for verily, it was one of those episodes which changed my emotional investment in a character completely)? Watching the finally released in Germany Hitchcock. Before I get to my review: you've got to feel for Toby Jones. He gets hired to play Truman Capote in Infamous, and Capote, where Philip Seymour Hofmann does just that, gets out first and gets all the attention (and the Oscar for Hofmann). Next, he gets hired to play Alfred Hitchcock in The Girl, and wouldn't you know it, Hitchcock starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitch gets there first. Mind you, by all accounts the films are completely different, and not just because they deal with different parts of Hitchcock's life - The Girl, according to reviews, being primarily about The Birds and Hitchcock being sadistic to Tippi Hedren, while Hitchcock deals with the making of Psycho and the key relationship in it is the one between Hitchcock and his life time collaborator and wife, Alma. The later is played by Helen Mirren and is absolutely awesome. She and the relationship between her and her husband are also the primary reason why I'd reccommend seeing the film.

I mean, as an entry in the "movie about a movie" category, it's okay, and decided to go for a dark humor/social comedy narrative. (Hitchcock's blonde fixation and the way he could bully his actresses is touched upon via Vera Miles, but as the primary blonde in Psycho was Janet Leigh (played by Scarlett Johannsen who is charming as J.L., but it's really not a big part), with whom he had an amiable relationship, we're not getting into psychological horror territory here.) But focusing on a long time (decades!) married couple and using the story to examine specifically both their working and their emotional dynamic is what makes it (sadly) still unusual, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's also great to see Alma being given her due in film history. Film critic and historian Charles Champlin once wrote, “The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma’s.” They met when they both worked at the Famous Players-Lasky Studio in London during the early 1920's. Under her maiden name Alma Reville, she earned a story credit in no less than sixteen of his films for story adaptation or screenplay collaboration, and was the uncredited editor in most of the others as well. (In Psycho when Hitchcock worked on the final cut, she famously spotted Janet Leigh blinking - or, as other versions of the story have it, swallowing - in the show scene after Marion Crane was supposed to be dead.) In Hitchcock, they trade one liners and barbs where both the sarcasm and affection are real - they know each other so well that it always hits home when it's suppoed to - and if she's bothered (though long since resigned to the existence of) by his life long blonde fixations (and the fact he mortgaged their house to finance Psycho), he's jealous because she's collaborating with another writer. But, as Alma at one point says, they really don't do maudlin, and the whip smart collaboration of a life time wins the day once more.

(You can see why I found this appealing. :)

Acting-wise: Hopkins, despite artificial belly, stuffed cheeks and appropriate body language, doesn't look much like Hitchcock, but he has the mannerisms down flat. (Hitchcock being one of the most instantly recognizable directors.) I didn't get the impression this was a soul-baring type of performance, but then, see above, this isn't that type of film. Alma Reville Hitchcock didn't have a similar public presence, so Helen Mirren has more free room creating her; whether or not the result is accurate, I can't say, but it feels right. The actors who play Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles each do a good job with the body language and voice, but this isn't a making-of-film where the actors are the focus (as opposed to the director and his collaborators), so they don't have to do more than offer a few supporting scenes.

Speaking of similarities, or not: there is one point where Hitchcock looks at photos of himself and Alma in their house, and you can tell they restaged actual photos using Hopkins and Mirren, until he gets to a photo that shows them in their youth working in British silent film, and there an actual photo of a young Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville is used. Which looks utterly unlike Hopkins and Mirren at any stage of their lives, and yet doesn't break the illusion. Here it is, for the aw factor:





Scriptwise: I'm not sure the MacGuffin of Hitchcock occasionally chatting with Head!Ed Gein (Ed Gain being the real life serial killer who was the basis for Norman Bates in Psycho) doesn't overstay its welcome, but using it, and Hitchcock addressing the audience in the fashion of his tv appearances at the beginning and the end of the film was a neat way to set the tone and pay homage to the black humor that was Hitchcock just as much as the suspense was.


In conclusion: not a must, but good to watch if you're into established-since-decades relationships as a central pairing and Helen Mirren being awesome. :)