i don't get it :-)


could someone, who's seen the movie, please explain ... how it works? do they use old TV footage of hitchcock, is it part CGI part real? ... is it good?! :-)

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It is montage, with several threads that run throughout.

There is old TV footage of Hitchcock, and a lot of other TV archive material. There are a few CGI sequences, but it's not a big part of the movie.

Is it good? That's a matter of taste. It's intelligently done and full of ideas, but it's not for everyone - more like a "video art" experience than a traditional movie ("art house" or otherwise).

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Half way through it now, and WANTING to like it, get it, understan it, but to be honest, struggling. I'm afraid it is just not engaging me.
few visible scars

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Looking back at this now, I feel the same.

Hitchcock's work is wonderful.

Grimonprez's Dial HISTORY was great.

But Grimonprez on Hitchcock didn't work.

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I agree with Ray. I kept struggling to make sense of the intentionally disjointed style but half way through I just gave up. It all seemed very smart on the surface but I just couldn't get what the larger point was. That 60s coffee commercials were sexist? That there was paranoid enmity between the super powers in the late 50s? That Hitchcock was portly? The sum wasn't as good as the parts. I felt like I spent 45 minutes listening to the impregnably opaque ramblings of an extremely bright schizophrenic. All sound and fury but, well, you know the rest...

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I know I'm way late to the party, but I saw it on NetFlix and love almost everything Hitchcock. I guess part of my problem was that this film was listed as a "documentary"...after a while I began to understand it was some hybrid (never really came to the place of thinking it was a "mockumentary", but thought it was trying to be clever like Hitchcock, only failing to do so). I'm half-way through, but had to come here to the boards (which I NEVER do before starting/finishing a film) just to try to get some parameters of what I'm seeing.

My mid-point review is that it's wholly disjointed. While I like all the pop-culture relics, the whole thing has been a bit of a mess. I will finish it though, now having some bearings, and hope to have my time redeemed.

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So, without being too pretentious in replying to my own comment, just a follow up: I did finish the film. I'd say the biggest hurdles it had to get over was keeping the narrative cohesive, and pacing. As I believe someone else has said, this film is art, as in could be installed in an art museum, where the context could give it some definition and those who witness the work could be in a different state of mind.

This film would also do well to be projected on a wall during a party you might throw.

But to sit through it not having a framework from which to view it, it is all but a lost cause. As a movie, it is still stored as fragments in my mind. Some of those fragments were poignant and beautiful, but on the whole, it is lost...or to be said another way, the sum of the parts is more than the whole.

There are pacing changes about half-way through and at the very end, that give a better feel for what could have been accomplished, but unfortunately, those are the minority in this film.

6/10

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