Dial H for Hitchcock (1999) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Well made documentary covering the entire career of Alfred Hitchcock features interviews with Janet Leigh, Jonathan Demme, Brian De Palma, Curtis Hanson, Wes Craven, Peter Bogdanovich and various others including Hitchcock himself. We really don't learn anything new here but it's always interesting hearing directors speak of their favorite films and there are some nice stories told here.
This is a great documentary of a great man.It tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), the master of suspense.
This might be a fine documentary to watch if you've never seen anything at all on Hitchcock before; it gives you the basic facts and a chronology of his career and all that. But for anyone with any actual familiarity with Hitchcock, this will all have been seen before.
Ted Haimes put together this tribute to a fine film maker. It's narrated by Kevin Spacey, and there are interpolated comments from Alfred Hitchcock's stars, co-workers, relatives and friends like Janet Leigh, Norman Lloyd, Joseph Stefano, John Michael Hayes, and Peter Bogdanovich.
Ted Haimes' subject for this fantastic documentary is the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, who had a long and distinguished career as a film director. He gave the English and American cinemas some of the best movies during the first three quarters of the twentieth century.
Despite giving a glimpse at some intriguing archive footage this treads the same path as previous looks at Hitch's career. Shame whoever was responsible for researching this piece chose to pull out (amongst others) the old chestnut about the failure of "Torn Curtain".
Not only a good glimpse at the legendary works of the Master of Suspense, this documentary, which, had it been a series, could have focused on more films, but a more modern approach that does not only repeat what Hitchcock declared himself about his movies in the famous Truffaut book. It is a very good lesson to all those who still consider Hitch only from that point of view.
If you've been living under a rock for the past thirty years or so, you may not be that familiar with all things Hitchcock. But fans of the great director have seen much of this footage before--or at least similar interviews with participants in Hitchcock's films, to be vaguely familiar with most of the points accented here.
This was my introduction to Alfred Hitchcock, and it makes for a splendid introduction! This was shown on the Starz network around this time of release, and it was a good overview of Hitchcock's career.
