There is a speech delivered by Helen Mirren in Hitchcock that begins bluntly and
forcefully, before becoming one of those acting moments that gets played over
and over again at awards shows. It’s a moment of performance that can so
quickly and easily become overwrought, but then you realize that Mirren is an
actress of incredible skill, subtlety, and professionalism that she won’t let
her performance overshadow her character. She plays Alma Reville, the great
director Alfred Hitchcock’s long-suffering wife and behind-the-scenes
collaborator. She holds the film together and although Hitchcock is ostensibly concerned with the making of Psycho, that’s really just a backdrop
for the way their marriage functioned and occasionally faltered.
