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Health & Fitness

'The Girl' Review: Hitchcock's Secret Abuse Towards Tippi Hedren

Alfred Hitchcock is considered the "master of suspense"...is Mr. Hitchcock hiding his abuse towards Tippi Hedren "behind the scenes"? HBO's 'The Girl' explores the theory in depth.

The Girl, premiered on HBO on October 20 and gave its viewers shocking and surprising results. Most people know Alfred Hitchcock as the “master of suspense,” most call his movies “genuine horror” and is well known for always “popping up” in every one of his movies in some way. The audience always sees Mr. Hitchcock, but how much does the audience know about what goes on behind the scenes? HBO’s The Girl gives this curious question a TV-movie.

The plot of The Girl tells a classic tale of a power driven, narcissistic, rich movie director, and a blonde just trying to make her way up in the world; rather simplistic and unoriginal. In The Girl, Hitchcock (portrayed by Toby Jones) falls in love with the gorgeous Tippi Hedren (portrayed by Sienna Miller), makes her broken promises of fame, flirts with her to no end, is crucially rejected, and in turn, subjects her to twisted punishments under the guise of being “the master of suspense and horror.”

In the TV-movie, it starts to get interesting when young Tippi Hedren is cast as the lead as Melanie Daniels in the 1963 film “The Birds.” Here, the audience sees Hitchcock take interest in young Tippi immediately. Almost a half an hour after first shooting, Hitchcock makes an advance towards Ms. Hedren in an unidentified car, saying “Touch me...no one can see us.” Tippi Hedren is a strong woman and she has no interest in Hitchcock, other than a professional one, so she removes herself from the situation immediately. Hitchcock makes various other advances at the character, but is turned down every time.

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“Fed up” with the rejection, The Girl takes a different turn; it gazes into the twisted mind of Alfred Hitchcock and his plans to punish Tippi for all the cruel rejection. He uses his power as director to brutally punish Hedren in the film “The Birds.” It is portrayed that Mr. Hitchcock fenced off an area somewhere in the set and put real birds (not mechanical ones, like those that were used before) and let them peck relentlessly at Hedren for hours. After all of the abuse, Hitchcock brings up the terms of her contract and she comes to the realization that she’s stuck with him for another “cinema success,” named “Marnie.”

The TV-movie continues on and it just keeps rolling and rolling and rolling...with the continuation of explored abuses passed from Alfred Hitchcock to Tippi Hedren. The end of the movie reveals Hedren’s growth and personal development away from Hitchcock, even though he almost ruined her career.

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The Girl focused on “The Birds” and “Marnie,” but told us a generic story line at the same time: everything isn’t as it seems, and the rich, famous, and talented can be the worst kinds of people to walk this earth... even is they are considered one of the “greatest directors alive.”

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