Accuracy With Real Events : Hitchcock (2012)

Hitchcock (2012)

Fact Checking 'Hitchcock': The Man, The Movie and The Myth: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/24/167539437/fact-checking-hitchcock-the-man-the-movie-and-the-myth

I felt for my research I needed to see what parts of the film and television programmes I have researched are historically accurate and what isn't, so I am able to see why writers tend to exaggerate or bend history into moments of drama for the screen.

For Hitchcock, I looked at an interview with Patrick McGilligan, author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, to see the truth in the film and what was fabricated for more suspense and drama to the film.

In terms of the making of Psycho, it is confirmed that there was trouble getting Psycho made because Paramount, who he was under contract with, were 'horrified at the possibility of this lurid film being made'. It was also true that Alfred Hitchcock did pay for Psycho to be made out of his own pocket and forwent his usual salary which he would have gotten if he were to have made a film for Paramount. But what is not true is that he took out a mortgage on his house in Hollywood and had to watch his spending, because Hitchcock in fact had two houses and a lot of savings along with that so he was more than able to fund Psycho to be made.

Further on in the interview, it comes onto the strained relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville on-screen, but real-life this was not the case at all, in fact, McGilligan thought that 'it's one of the few happy marriages I know of in Hollywood that lasted for 50-plus years'. But, McGilligan also says that the part in the film where Alma comes to the studio when Alfred is ill is 'complete fiction', and that also the film exaggerates on Alma being the 'person who bails Hitchcock out of every crisis that he's supposedly undergoing'.

McGilligan finally denies any truth behind Hitchcock scaring Janet Leigh during the shower scene to get a more real performance because the film was linked to 'this idea that behind this guy who makes films about serial murderers is a guy who has violent impulses, which was not the case'.