The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock

The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock
Edward White

Alfred Hitchcock has long been a favourite subject for biographers, and I’ve even reviewed a couple of the more recent ones by Patrick McGilligan and Peter Ackroyd. But there’s always room for another, so . . .

The attraction comes from Hitchcock’s cultural impact and the air of mystery that he both cultivated and came by naturally. Personal contradictions are fertile ground for biographers, and Hitchcock had plenty. Was he a man of deep faith, or no faith at all? Was he asexual (“Hitch . . . without the cock”), lustful, or gay? Was he auteur (that is, an artist, a label he rejected) or entertainer? Even in terms of Hitchcock’s working style we can get into arguments. Did he really storyboard every shot in each of his movies, so that he could just snooze through the actual filming? Was that how he worked, or was it just a myth fed to the media? It all depends on whose anecdotes you value more.

There’s evidence pointing in every direction, and Edward White looks at a lot of it in chapters that present twelve different ways of looking at the Master. He doesn’t resolve the contradictions, but then nobody else has and I think it’s safe to say that no one ever will. What he presents instead is a range of entry points that deepen our understanding and appreciation of Hitchcock’s life and work in a fresh way.