‘My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock’ Review

With his newest deep-dive movie about movies, prolific documentarian Mark Cousins switches up his approach by adding a heaping dollop of mischief. My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock, his love letter to one of cinema’s towering greats, flaunts a title that could be an impostor’s declaration on To Tell the Truth. The opening credits announce that the film was “written and voiced by Alfred Hitchcock.” Say what? The first sound of that voice on the soundtrack, however familiar its adenoidal depths and Cockney slants, sparks reasonable doubt — suspicions confirmed when the maestro’s initial comments concern a huge bust of him in London, erected 20 years after his death.

The master of suspense is voiced by English impressionist Alistair McGowan, and eventually, once you’ve gotten past the film’s ventriloquist conceit — that Hitchcock, addressing Cousins and us, is revisiting his body of work from the perspective of the smartphone-tethered 21st century — you’ll marvel at the breathy detail of the performance. By then the film will have drawn you in with Cousins’ typically sharp connections as he delves into the visual language of Hitchcock’s creations, the narrative motifs and inventive strategies — wizardly tricks in “a trickster medium.”