The Twelve Lives Of Alfred Hitchcock (5*)

You won't find too many scholarly works on my bookshelves but when the subject is Alfred Hitchcock I'll read almost anything, including Donald Spoto's contoversial bio, published in 1983 to celebrate the centenary of the Hollywood director's birth in London's East End.  Controversial because it speculated about Hitchcock's kinkiness even though his creative partnership with Alma Reville and their early marriage endured for 56 years until his death.  As Edward White observes, those speculations would be met, at worst, with "ho-hum" in today's sex-positive environment, or even more likely approbation given that his sadism may have fomented cinematic masterpieces of sublimation.  On the other hand, it's also pretty clear that most of his blondes could have had him cancelled if they'd worked together during the Me Too era.

But that's neither here nor there in the larger context of White's brilliant re-imagining of biography itself in this fascinating book that abandons chronology for theme.  Each section--the more sensationally titled include "The Murderer," "The Voyeur" and "The Fat Man"--explores a different aspect of Hitchcock's life, seen through the lens of his movies.  In "The Murderer," for example, White notes that Hitchcock shot a documentary about Nazi concentration camps for the British government: 

At one point .  . . the camera takes to the threshold of a room with a sign above the doorway 'BRAUSEBAD,' German for 'shower bath.'  At first sight it looks like a bathroom, albeit functional and forbidding.  Once inside, the brilliant white of the room is draped by sinister dark shadows . . . The apertures on the ceiling are not shower heads, but vents for poison gas.  This is not a place of cleansing but of murder. 

Cut to (as I did, re-watching the only movie I had been forbidden to see as a child) Psycho:  

Picture that moment when Hitchcock's camera looks up directly into the shower head, the water pouring onto Marion's face and chest.  For a moment she looks relaxed, having made up her mind to hand back the money she stole and return to being the good, honest person we all know her to be.  From nowhere, she is overwhelmed by a force of inexplicable depravity.  Within seconds, she lies dead, destined for an unmarked grave.

Whoa!  Few books have given me the kind of goosebumps I had while reading White connect the dots--subconscious or not--between horrific reality and thrillingly executed imagination.

But as compelling as that example may be, my favorite takeaway comes from "The Pioneer,"  a chapter that discusses Hitchcock's commitment to the technology of filmmaking, which included hiring the best people.  Remember how much Bernard Herrmann's score contributed to Psycho (and Sweeney Todd!) but also recall, if you're a baby boomer like me, how Hitchcock used television to extend his brand with Alfred Hitchcock Presents while the rest of Hollywood was shitting bricks about the threat that TV posed to movies.  His silhouette was once as recognizable as Kim Kardashian's ass!

"The Pioneer" also makes it pretty clear that Hitchcock, who compared actors to cattle on the Dick Cavett Show, probably would have been on board with artificial intelligence especially if it can be used to replace them.  Avatars will do anything you tell them to and won't spill the tea like Tippi Hedren!

Reading The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock is a particularly enjoyable because so many of the director's films are streaming, and unlike the ones I first saw on TV, uncut.  In addition to Psycho, I watched The Birds (more relevant today than it was in 1963 because it easily can be interpreted as the natural world's revenge for the damage man has done to the environment) and The Lodger (my first silent film, but absolute proof that Hitchcock could move entertaining pictures without sound).  I look forward to at least a dozen more!