Variety
Offers almost zero insight into the peculiar workings of creative genius, or into the rich, taboo-shattering legacy of the film whose making it documents.
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Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchock biopic with the Master of Suspense portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins. The story centres on his relationship with wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) during the troubled production of Psycho in 1959. The cast of that famed thriller is played by Scarlett Johansson (as star Janet Leigh), Jessica Biel (as Vera Miles) and James D'Arcy (as Anthony Perkins who embodied crazed hotelier Norman Bates).
This is the feature debut from screenwriter and documentarian Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! The Story of Anvil). The screenplay is based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello.
2012Rating: M, for some violent images, sexual content and thematic material99 minsUSA
BiographyDramaTrue Story & Biography
Hitchcock / Reviews
Time Out
Too-cutesy conceits such as Hitch's imagined conversations with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) feebly attempt to ground the story in psychological terra firma, while horribly on-the-nose dialogue flatters those viewers who prefer to keep their sense of cinema history on fan-mag frivolous levels.
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Time Magazine
It's a feel-good frolic, which is fine for anyone who prefers their Hitchcock history tidied up, absent the megalomania, the condescending cruelty and tendency to sexual harassment that caused his post-Psycho blonde discovery Tippi Hedren to declare him "a mean, mean man."
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The New York Times
The movie has its diversions, including Scarlett Johansson's bodacious Janet Leigh and Michael Stuhlbarg's wheedling Lew Wasserman. It's fluff. But while its dim fantasies about Hitchcock and the association of genius with psychosis can be written off as silly, they also smack of spiteful jealousy.
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The Guardian
At heart the story... a marriage, between a fat, ugly genius and the "tiny, birdlike woman" who was invigilator, confidante and touchstone to his talent.
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Rolling Stone
Hopkins and Mirren are acting pros in stellar form. There's no way you want to miss the pleasure of their company in a movie that offers a sparkling and unexpectedly poignant look at how to sustain a career and a marriage.
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Roger Ebert
Hitchcock tells the story not so much as the making of the film, but as the behind-the-scenes relationship of Alma and Hitch. This is a disappointment, since I imagine most movie fans will expect more info about the film's production history.
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Hollywood Reporter
A work of fantasy and speculation as much as it is history and biography, but as an interpretation of a major talent's inner life and imagination, it's undeniably lively and provocative.
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