Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

dromasca 2012 was a good year for us, fans of Alfred Hitchcock. Two movies were released centered around the character of the genial and obsessive master of suspense. I liked 'Hitchcock' starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren which I saw, a while ago, close to its release date. I had somehow lesser expectations from 'The Girl' which bears the anti-promotional label of 'TV Film' - luckily I can say that despite the very different approach and the controversial approach in describing the character and personal life of the great director, it also is a very good film, and there are many more good reasons to put it near the most respected and starred companion, besides the year of the release.'Based on a true story' can also be sometimes a deterrent but it is not here either. The reason is that the 'true story' is about the relationship between director Hitchcock and Tippie Hedren, the feminine star of two of his movies - the famous 'The Birds' and the lesser known 'Marnie' that followed. Screen text at the start of the movie makes a case for the authenticity of what follows and to some extent prepares us for a version of the Hitchcock character which was rumored during his life, documented in memoirs and testimonies after his death, but never caught as such on screen until now. A Hitchcock who was not only obsessive in his film making, but also in the relations with the actresses he worked with, a film director of unequaled talent but also an aging man who tried to overcome the inevitable by trying to use the fascination he won with his art and personality in order to bring to bed the much younger stars he worked with, and when one of them like Tippie Hedren rejected him. he was sliding into what we bluntly call today harassment.The approach taken by the script and by director Julian Jarold was rejected by many of the admirers of Hitchcock. I do not have an opinion one way or another, but I will observe that some of the great admired artists of our time had their own problems that reflected in their personalities and relations with the teams or women in their lives - to mention Woody Allen, Polansky or Depardieu as a few other illustrious examples. The personal lives after all make good material for biographical movies (like the one we are discussing here) but hardly can shade their cinematographic work. I actually believe that Jarold tried to stick to facts, without necessarily making a moral judgment. According to his own criteria the viewer can consider the 'Hitch' in this film as being a harassing maniac, or an aging man falling to an autumnal crisis in his life. What cannot be denied is that one way or another 'The Birds' remains like a peak movie in the creation of Hitchcock and history of cinema.Some fine actors work make this movie even more interesting. Toby Jones creates a very credible Hitchcock with the silhouette and voice of the character we know and love, and enough ambiguity to serve the purposes and ideas of the director. Imelda Staunton almost made me forget Helen Mirren with her rendition of Imelda Hitchcock. Last and best, Sienna Miller has all the beauty and inner strength that makes us believe that there was such a girl who stood up to the advances of the great Alfred Hitchcock.

tomsview Wow! Is that really what happened? In many biographies about Alfred Hitchcock, the most Tippi Hedren ever said about the incident when Alfred Hitchcock supposedly propositioned her was, "Demands were made of me that I could not acquiesce to." But in "The Girl", Toby Jones' Hitchcock puts it right out there when he says to Sienna Miller's Tippi Hedren, "From now on, I want you to make yourself sexually available to me at all times. Whatever I want you to do, whenever I want you to do it." Possibly it happened that way, Tippi Hedren seems to have been consulted by the filmmakers. My feeling is that where there was that much smoke there had to be fire, but just how fair is "The Girl"?The movie is nothing less than interesting. Toby Jones is amazing, and Sienna Miller more than holds her own, but opinion over the film is divided. On one side are those outraged that Hitchcock's reputation has been besmirched without a chance to defend himself, while on the other are those outraged at what Hitchcock appears to have done to Tippi Hedren."The Girl" relates how Alfred Hitchcock groomed the inexperienced Hedren to star in "The Birds" and "Marnie". During the process, Hitchcock changed from mentor to monster becoming totally obsessed with her. Eventually he made an overt sexual advance. She refused and that was the end of the relationship.One scene in "The Girl" does undermine it. It's the somewhat salacious screen test where Hitchcock asks Hedren to give Martin Balsam a long lingering kiss. Unfortunately for the makers of "The Girl", the actual test clip is fairly well known from documentaries and YouTube, and is a lot less threatening than the recreation. In reality, Balsam and Hedren actually seem quite comfortable with each other. It was silly to overdo a scene that is so accessible; it leaves you wondering how much over-egging went on with the rest of the custard.The difference between Hedren and Hitchcock's other leading ladies was that they were better able to handle him. Most were established stars, surrounded by husbands, boyfriends and agents, but Hedren didn't have all that; she was just starting out and was far more vulnerable.According to some sources, it was about this time that Hitchcock's judgement also seemed to be slipping. The suppressed voyeuristic tendencies and fantasies that helped inform his great films were taking on a harder edge. He now wanted to be explicit in what he showed.Up until then, the Motion Picture Production Code kept him in check. Would films like "Rear Window", "Vertigo" or even "Psycho" be the enduring classics they are today if Hitchcock had been allowed to go all the way? The censor made him innovative and subtle. However, by the late 60's the Code was gone. No one ever ranks 1972's "Frenzy" among his greatest movies; plenty of rape and nudity on display there. Fortunately he never made "Kaleidoscope"; with what he had planned, it could have been a real legend killer.As far as "The Girl" is concerned, maybe it's best to just enjoy the show. Toby Jones' Hitchcock is even better than his Truman Capote, genius really, the voice is perfect, and Sienna Miller is so beautiful that you can believe that a fat, old auteur could harbour a fantasy or two about her. But maybe the last words on the subject could be the classic line Hitchcock once directed at an actor who was getting a bit too worked up about things, "Don't worry, it's only a movie".

TheLittleSongbird I knew I wanted to see The Girl as Alfred Hitchcock is my favourite director. It also had a very interesting subject that would have been even more so if done right. But when seeing it around Christmas, I found myself very disappointed overall, of all the programmes aired in the festive season The Girl gets my vote for being the biggest let down. It is not entirely bad though. The costumes and sets do look beautiful, the make up for Hitchcock is really outstanding and those birds are scary(sadly for them the scenes they featured in had no impact otherwise). But the best asset was easily Toby Jones' Hitchcock, an eerily brilliant performance- much much than a impersonation as I feared it would be- that gives an emotional complexity to a role that is written anything but here. Even the voice is spot on. In short, a very good example of a performance that was much better than the film(or TV film in The Girl's case) itself.Unfortunately for Jones, he is the only actor who is good. Imelda Staunton and Penelope Wilton do try hard but are criminally underused in very clichéd roles, while everybody else underacts embarrassingly. And I will say the same for Sienna Miller here too. She looks lovely but aside from that she only seems to be able to act terrified and act wooden. I know that Tippi Hedren is not considered among the best of actresses, I happen to think despite the lack of experience that she was better than given credit for, but Miller looks as though she was told to "look beautiful but don't try to act, other than in the scenes with the birds, as Hedren wasn't a good actress".The acting is not actually the worst thing about The Girl, the script and story were the main culprits. The script is a real clunker, often overwrought, very stilted and worst of all frustratingly one-sided. Here Hedren seems to be the victim sort of character, and throughout the only kind of sympathy shown for Hitchcock is that of self-pity, other than that he is little more than a lewd sadist. Okay I am not denying that Hedren was treated poorly by Hitchcock when filming The Birds, but Hitchcock's treatment of her in The Girl seems to be hysterically overboard here. You are wondering a lot how much truth is there here? The story feels very sluggishly paced, with the reenactment of the iconic telephone box scene tedious instead of frightening, despite the birds, the dream sequences are really hackneyed and the how Hedren was treated by Hitchcock is dealt with in The Girl in a repetitive and very episodic fashion.Julian Jarrold's direction is routine and does nothing to make the story or characters come to life. There is an over-reliance on close-ups, I don't mind close-ups as long as they are not used too much and are not overly-obvious, in both cases with The Girl they were overused and too obvious. We don't care for any of the characters, despite the actors. With Hedren and Hitchcock they are one-sided, that with how Hitchcock is written we cannot identify with him at all and Miller's performance is too bland to make Hedren's plight register with us. The rest of the characters are underwritten clichés, which is a big part of the underacting. I found little memorable about the music as well, only the use of Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde prelude stuck in my head and that's because it is one of my favourites and used quite nicely actually in the film.Overall though, considering the subject matter and the talent The Girl was a severe disappointment. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Skint111 As Total Film magazine said of this one-off drama, "it amounts to nothing less than a wholesale character assassination". They were right – it makes Albert Goldman's biography of John Lennon appear hagiographic.While it looks great and Sienna Miller is fine as Hedren and Jones captures Hitch's voice well, The Girl is a narrow and nasty portrayal of the world's greatest film director. In its attempt to construct a drama it forgets some important points: people often have to suffer for their art; Alfred Hitchcock was a film director who knew his audience better than anyone, his understanding of the human condition was deep, and he realised that the thing that mattered most was the experience that the audience would derive from his work. If it meant discomfort and long hours on the set, that was a price worth paying – there's no room for fluffy dressing gowns and tea and biscuit breaks when you're trying to create a masterpiece, something that might last for centuries.To suggest that Hitch unexpectedly sent a model bird crashing through a telephone box window just to terrify and "punish" Hedren, as opposed to being a desire to frighten the wits out of the audience, is absurd. The shoot of The Birds had been meticulously planned for – literally – years, and in any case, why would Hitch risk harming his leading lady's features? The greatest of people are endowed with light and shade, and possess the ability to view human existence from deep and differing positions. Hitchcock was one of these people. This greatness is something to be lauded – not bemoaned and belittled, as was the case with The Girl.