14/12/2012 The Review Show

Tonight on Review, a box of Christmas treats. Peter Jackson

kicks off a new toll kin franchise, with Martin Freeman as the The

Hobbit. Matthew Bourne's long awaited return to Tchaikovsky, with

a Gothic interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. Raymond Briggs's beloved

The Snowman returns to our screens with a canine side kick. The Spice

Box of Earth back catalogue gets the West End treatment. And the

dark side of Hitchcock. I'm joined by Mark Thomas and David

Schneider. It has been nine years since Peter Jackson released the

last of his trilogy based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Now

he's back to the binning, for not one but three prequels.

He has returned to Middle-Earth for the first return of the The Hobbit,

starring Martin Freeman and the cream of English ago theing title.

The Lord of the Rings was an unbridled triumph commercially and

critically. It remains one of the biggest-grossing films of all time.

It was almost inevitable that Hollywood's attention would turn to

Tolkien's shorter and earlier book. Grace Kelly and Cate Blanchett

reprise their roles joined by others. But the most welcome return

comes in the form of Andy Serkis as Gollum.

Safe paths in the dark. Shut up. didn't say anything. I wasn't

talking to you. Jackson has opted for 3D and a higher frame rate to

bring the world to the big screen. Much of the weight of expectation

rests on the shoulders of Freeman, as the reluctant adventurer Nobody

home, go away and bother someone else, there is far too many dwarves

in my dining room. If this is a joke, it is in very poor taste.

Jackson's latest epic is at the cutting edge of movie technology,

is there enough plot and character as well as action to satisfy the h

hordes of the ring. The hordes of the ring will

probably lap it up, it is a slight children's book, it is three films.

This was over two-and-a-half hours long. Is it simply just a big

money-making exercise? I'm a complete Tolkien geek. The sort of

geek who will say that should be high, elvish there not middle. A

lot of Tolkien fans dismiss The Hobbit, it is a very slight book,

the stakes are totally different. In the Lord of the Rings, there is

the whole of the world is at stake, where as in The Hobbit there is,

let's go and get gold. They beef it up a bit with the homeland thing.

But it is about going and getting gold, do you fancy an adventure.

Does it lend itself to three installments? They have tried to

beef it up. Let me first say that by the end I did want more. Which

is good. But by the beginning, the first hour, I wanted less. I mean

the first hour is really turgid. It breaks all the rules of screen

writing, where there is scene, every scene has to move you gone,

join the scene as late as possible. The first 40 minutes we hadn't left

Bilbo Baggins's house? It went on, and on, and on. An elf came in and

a dwarf? In the book it is an action adventure story, let's have

the action and adventure. By the time you get to the bits where it

all kicks off, which are great. The bits with the goblin king, Gollum,

by the time you get to that big, I was in half a mind to think, go on

Gollum, just eat him. Just do him and get this thing done with. Those

bits are great. I believe that actually, when you look at a film

like that, they could have really done with brushing up on their

martial arts and movies like that, and go someone like John Wu, who

knows how to move an action movie forward. A lot of the action is

about the dwarves, they do come in one-by-one, it is a retinue? Trying

to recognise them, one of the things about the film is it is shot

in a high frame rate. It is the make-up. It is being released in

various versions, you can see it in 2-D or 3-D and I saw it high frame-

rate, don't, you can see the make- up and applied wart. It is like

children's television. It looks like video, it is the most

sophisticated film ever, and it looks like individual yo. With the

dwarves, all I saw was the noses. That is right, if you film on high-

definition, 48-frames per second and you are filming on set, on that

high-definition you will get a really well defined set. That is

what they get. A big problem for me, the stakes, were they high enough.

Nobody died. Spoiler alert. In the Lord of the rings, people get

killed off, there is a sense of grief and loss. It is big emotions.

Here they talk on thousands of goblins. It is only the first

installment. Let's lock at dwarves here. This is where there is --

let's look at dwarves here, this is where there is actually a chase

sequence. Was that a wolf? Are there wolves out there? Wolves, no

It means the pack isn't far behind. Ork pack? Who did you tell about

your quest beyond kin. Who did you tell? No-one, I swear. What is

going on? You are being hunted. There is Richard Armitage, and Ken

Stott, all there as dwarves? One of the problems for me, I'm not a

Tolkien fan, I'm not into the genre. What carried me through the Lord of

the Rings is Vigo Mortenson, Richard Armitage, he's a dwarf.

Martin Freeman is too. He has a nice hesitancy to him. A kind of

incredibly comedy. He has this amazing sense of bewildered be

fuddlement. You know, he does that wonderful little double take and a

sigh, you automatically fall for his vulnerability. He's very human

for a Hobbit, he brings humanity to it. But as you say, nobody dies, it

is a more comedic performance? of the comedy had my shuddering,

especially in the first, endless hour, where he's going "don't take

any more food". And the doilies? was surely, a bit of editing would

have helped. Let's talk about the way they created the world. Peter

Jackson has all the sets. You think they look just like a video game

almost? They don't have the subtlty of what video actually looks like

when it is rendered like film? seemed to me extraordinary, it

looks like a cartoon or video game. It has to be said, its target

market presumably is teenage boys. I took three teenage boys, and they

loved it. They loved Gollum? They were hooked from the beginning,

they were perfectly happy to go along with the build up to the

world. Half way through I was gripped, once you get into the

goblin kingdom and you have the falls and it is exciting. From that

point on wards I kept the contrast between Freeman's goodness and

niceness, and the dark world threatening him. The necromancers

coming on and that. There were wonderful moments with the affects

of the eagles picking up the dwarves, which I thought looked

beautiful. It harked back to the Lord of the Rings. There were bits

that looked amazing. Especially the goblin kingdom, the character of

the gob Britain king of the great. It comes -- goblin king was great.

It comes back to using up the suspense time from the beginning,

you can't take your time and build up suspense and make it really

scary, they have lost that element. It should be scary, I remember

reading it to my daughter and she was scared. The problem with the

scaryness is the thing about nobody dying, and they take on so many, in

the goblin kingdom they take on so many goblins, it is not believable.

I want to believe Middle Earth is real. When they were swinging

across that bridge that they could kill that many? There is a scene

with the trolls, it is problematic, you don't know if you were meant to

laugh at emthis, they were like West Ham fans viewed through the

70s the way they speak. But then they could kill the dwarves, the

stakes isn't high, we have been laughing at them. We know you will

go for episode two and three? even on a long haul flight. I might

be dragged along by teenagers who liked it. Gregory Bourillon is

arguably Britain's best known choreography, creating hits and

headlines with his fabulous flamboyant take on classical and

contemporary dance. Now he has completed his hat trick of

Tchaikovsky's ballet, with the story of Sleeping Beauty. The story

was first published in 1697, it is a timeless classic.

The 1890 ballet to music by Tchaikovsky, stuck firmly to the

story of a wicked fairy, a Princess woken from a 100-year curse by the

kiss of a Prince. This being Matthew Bourne, however, things

were never going to be so straight forward.

Bourne made waves in the ballet world, with striking

reinterpretations of classics, including a spectacular Nutcracker.

It was his all-male Swan Lake that catapulted him to fame and changed

the face of ballet. The history of dance has become a very important

element in what I do. As a choreographer, I love to dippinging

into different eras of dance, different styles of dance. But the

classical ballets that I have reinterm preted, I'm very con--

interm preted, I'm very conscious of them. It has taken seven years

to return to Sleeping Beauty, working with long time collaborator,

set and costume designer, Lez Brotherston. In this version,

Princess Aurora is born in 1890, like the original ballet. After her

big sleep, resurfaces in 2011. The show is selling fast, but does this

radical reimagining, complete with vampires, deliver something for the

audience to sink their teeth into? I can't imagine how many Sleeping

Beauty you have seen, does he do something original with a straight

forward plot? The thing about Sleeping Beauty, in the normal

ballet format, there is not a lot of plot. Second half I remember

reading about it in a ballet annual, now everyone dances a lot. Gregory

Bourillon loves that version and the music very much. I think --

Gregory Bourillon loves that very much, the -- Matthew Bourne loves

that very much, he starts tell ago really good story, he brings in the

baby Aurora, the character is usually a dead body at the back of

the stage. She's a naughty babey and puppet and crawls up walls and

is funny. When she's 21, in his version, she's a tomorrow boy and

in love with the gardener. Studly you have a Tory, really before you

haven't had a story -- suddenly you have a story, really you haven't

had a story before. He pays tribute to the ballet while he's doing it.

As you say, there is a lovely charming start with the Princess

Aurora as a puppet. He manages to bring in the darkness, with the

dream sequence is the faceless children, which I thought was

terrific. I love the idea, it was a very subtle way of being quite

dark? For me it was, I have to say, I felt quite mixed about the whole

thing. For me, one of the fundamental problems with it, was

that actually it didn't have an orchestra there. It just, because

ballet has to be a spectacle, you have to be engulfed by it, if you

haven't got it, if you are doing Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, and

you forget the orchestra, that is fundamental. Did it matter to you?

It does matter, it is entirely about money, it is a small

production that will tour. So they have done the next best thing, they

have specially recorded a score, and it's very heavily cut. Sleeping

Beauty can run to four hours, and this runs to about two and a bit.

Lucky Peter Jackson wasn't directing. You miss the orchestra

agree, I felt a moment where I went, shame, it is not a live orchestra.

There was so much on offer. I'm not a particular ballet fan, it didn't

matter, it's theatre, it is theatrical, it is all about the

story and the characters. My prejudice about ballet is it is

very neutral. Here you had a Aurora was a clear character, like you say,

a tomboy, there was a wonderful dance where she took off her shoes

and went barefoot. Visually it was extraordinary. The define was great.

Having the idea of bringing in a figure of Carbosa's son and making

him dark but handsome? It is inspirational to set up a love

triangle, and Cardok, the son of the imagined fairy comes back to

seek her revenge. That does set up drama where there is none. Bourne

is incredibly good at telling each thing. You probably found, you can

understand every single thing that goes on. He is the great

communicator of dance. Though I agree with you about the music, I

also, seeing the ballet over and over, you think here is the Rose

and the bit where they Waltz round. For me he made me their afresh. I

felt excited about hearing it differently. This is the first time

I have seen a Matthew Bourne production, I was really excited

and looked forward to it, it came highly recommended, it would be

ingenious and inventive, actually I felt vaguely disappointed by it.

What I thought was really interesting, for me, when they

moved the different styles of dance through the era, the bit that

always stood out was the classical ballet, that was the most thrilling

bit. Interesting you were talking about paying homeage to other, the

Fred Astaire, the moving walkway, that was terrific, again, you are

right, when it came really alive was that wonderful duet when she's

asleep with Karadok, that was incredibly moving? And incredibly

imagined. There is quite a lot of paying specific tribute, he makes

it into his own contemporary take on it. He is brilliant at making

movement tell stories. That is what he does so superbly. It didn't jar?

No it seemed to always come from the character. That is what I liked.

There wasn't this sort of bowing down either to the score or to

tradition, it was like what is happening in my story, that is what

I loved. Do you think that Matthew feels pressure, when this was

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, Assad letter's wells, because, --

Sadler's Wells, do you think we expect extraordinary from him?

is the most relaxed of choreographers, he does, he always

makes money, he prides himself on making money. He does these

Christmas shows that people adore. He has things he would like to

explore. The passage where the fairies come in, which is spooky

and frighten, and detailed in terms of movement -- frightening, and

detailed in terms of movement, he has all these ideas in his head

that he is moving towards. I didn't like that because it wasn't part of

the story. You took your daughter there, what did she think of it?

She was 12 and loved it, adored it. There was an interesting thing

where you say every year he does this and people come along. You did

felt this is a slightly posh panto, something that happens on a regular

basis. As a first-timer, I feel a little bit what is going on what

are the rules here? For me it felt a little sack cin. I thought the

vampires Sachs cin. Did you think the vampires were like that? I was

rooting for them. If you want to find out more about

the production you can in next week's Imagine, it is on Tuesday at

10.35 on BBC One. The show is touring until the end of May.

Following link on the website. Slumping in front of the television

after an overindulgent festive dinner, you can be reasonably

certain a number of TV institutions will pack up, something tragic in

EastEnders, an old Morecambe and Wise, perhaps the sound of music.

This year a much-loved story has a new character.

The Oscar-nominated animation, The Snowman, has appeared on Channel 4

at Christmas for the last 30 years. Even if you don't have a TV, you

won't have escaped its hit single. # We're walking in the air

# We're floating in the moonlit sky It was based on a book by Raymond

Briggs, who gave his blessing to the same team to produce a sequel,

The Snowman and the Snowdog. # I can see the ground

# I can't see you # See our home town

# I can't see you Carefully crafted from 17,000 hand-

drawn frames, it tells the story of a boy who moves into a new house

and discovers a box hidden under the floor boards. It contains a

mysterious selection of objects, and an old photo, which inspires

him to set to work in the back garden. But this time there's a

little snow to spare. The soundtrack includes the song Light

The Night, written by Andy Burrows and Elan Escari. It includes a new

flying sequence. # Like a shooting star

Diving through the dark # See how we light the night

# How we light the night Will the arrival of the sock-eared

snowdog melt the hearts of hundreds and thousands of children and

grown-up kids. Are you a purist Mark, or were you

happy to see a redraw? I really liked it. I feel like I have made

an admission, I have come out and been a fan here. I adored it. I

adored this kind of stuff. I think one of the interesting things about

it as well, is this is a Christmas event, it is one of those events

where you sit round with the family and you can watch this thing

together. That is a nice thing. Christmas is about rituals. This

brings in a TV ritual. I really liked the fun they had with it,

backreferencing the old snowman, and playing around with some of it.

A lot of it is very similar to the original. The flying sequences,

meeting Santa, out on the Pole, all that kind of stuff. But there was

enough there to tweak a tear. Basically it is the same story, you

have the little boy and so forth, this time with his mother in the

house in the country. But there is this great simplicity, it seemed to

me after watching The Hobbit, it was like, thank God it is something

simply rendered and how lovely? thought how hard it is to do magic.

It seems to have all the same ingredients, yet to me it didn't

have the magic. I thought if I were a child and I watched that one

first, I would be so disappointed. Almost everything about it is a bit

more crude. And a bit more brash, and a bit more brightly coloured,

where The Snowman had this wonderful melancholy undertow to it.

This is trying to entertain and charm us. I just felt it didn't at

all. Because actually there is a melancholy in this country, and

Raymond Briggs wanted the whole thing about The Snowman to be about

death? What do you want, the boy's dog dies, you want melancholy! (in

an American accent) it is interesting, I loved the original

snowman, it has a lot of emotional connection, my daughters grew up

with it. I got a bad back carrying my daughter through the flying

sequence over and over again. drank a lot of Irn Bru with it!

think if you hadn't seen that one, this would still be just as magical.

I don't think it would. It was full of yearning, actually, it is full

of loss. Is it nostalgic for you because you know the original and

it goes back 30 years? There is an element of nostalgia, when they

lift the floor board and find the box with the original snowman bits

in it, you know and recognise them immediately. There is one thing

certainly not the same, that is the music? Yes, the music is a sign of

what's wrong with it. It is just crude and effort-ful, I feel that

all the time it is incredibly insistent, it is trying to generate

an emotion. Don't you think that is to us, we're Aled Jones-ing about

the new version. Aled Jones wasn't the main man. But the whole idea

this is a childhood innocence before the fall and the world

changes? The music for me didn't work, if you hadn't seen The

Snowman. There were two jarring moments where I thought the music

crashed, one is that bit where they are doing the flying sequence, and

you think, a power ballad, and your heart sinks a little about with

that. And then they have the bit where they have the Tim Burton,

Edward Scissorhand music with the sparkly bits and coral voices, you

think they could do better than that. There are some modern

references, when they are flying they are going across The Eye and

The Shard? The home life though, no iPad, and a child playing with a

plane, that doesn't happen any more. What we like about it, after The

Hobbit, it is the simplicity about the animation, the classical score,

and of the story, it offers us nostalgia, I suppose. I liked the

dog. I would rather it was more about the dog and less the

repcation of what you already had. I didn't like things -- repcation

of what you already had, I didn't like the grumpy penguin, that is

against the spirit of the magical world, and introducing an adult

sensibility into it. You were saying about the Internet, come on,

we are talking about flying snowman. Everything is a trilogy, we will

have to have a third now. Then the prequel, with the snowflakes and

everything. It does beg the question, why

remake it, The Snowman reboot, like Batman Begins, it is not a whole

new story, it hasn't changed, why redo it? I would have liked them to

re-think it more if they were going to remake it. We will have a

prequel of It's A Wonderful Life. But The Snowman snow premier on

Channel 4 on Christmas Eve at 8.00, the original on the night before.

Scary, Ginger, Sporty and Posh, burst own to the scene in 1996

screaming The Girl. The Spice Box of Earth went on to sell 120

million records, before their hits were given the Mamma Mia! And We

Will Rock You. Jennifer Saunders and others have knitted it into a

West End catalogue, Viva Forever!. The story is around wannabe

popstars, entering a talent competition by bears more than a

passing resemblance to the X Factor. Only one of the group, Viva, played

by Hannah John Kayman, makes it through the opening rounds, who has

to choose between her friends and the chance of stardom. The lure of

fame wins out. Another plot strand concerns Viva's

relationship with her adoptive mother Lauren, played by Sally-Anne

Triplet. Viva is concerned she might want to track down her mother.

# Mamma I love you # Mamma I care

So are The Spice Girls songs strong enough to sustain a full length

show, and can Viva Forever! Give Mamma Mia! A run for its money.

David, did it spice up your life? It most definitely did. There were

two big problems with it, the first is that the back catalogue is not

big. They have three or four great songs. The rest is padding. Mamma

Mia! Had 30-odd songs to choose from. The other problem is I felt

the show didn't release its chimp enough. It was like almost as if

the choreography was a bit apologetic for some of the songs.

And it was only once you got into the second half of the second half

that it really took off. But, I would say, that the script is

brilliant, it is a very interesting, very funny script. I laughed and it

was interesting to see that special relationship that you get in a

jukebox show, between an audience that joins in, and performance,

that is what you don't get. I really enjoyed it. Sarah, did you

feel like joining in? I thought that the audience wanted to join in,

and they were disappointed. I think somewhere in the show there is

quite a good idea struggling to get out. The real problem is The Spice

Girls songs are fun. You feel this energy, it is bubble gum pop, what

they are not is power ballads that can carry the plot of a musical. In

trying to make them into that, of this come up with the most conkol

luted plot that never really -- convoluted plot that never goes

anywhere, it is first about reality show, then a look at fame and then

adoption story. Did you think that Jennifer Saunders had to look at

the stories and the plots and try to get less well known songs?

are two things wrong with it, the concept and the script. If you have

a jukebox musical, you have to go through the back catalogue and you

have to find a story and set of characters that have a reason to

sing these words. It is a job of cutting and pasting. What you end

up with is this weird story that doesn't resolve itself, satirising

the X Factor is ten years too late, and how anyone can do it after

Peter Kay is madness. The characters are so weak I can't

attack them because they can't defend themselves. What there is

here in spades are fun characters for older women, the younger group,

did they pale in comparison? thing that really excited me,

disagree about the script, I thought it was funny, I thought it

tackled some very interesting ars areas. Be a fab moments? -- Ab Fab

moments? But it looked at things like celebrity, motherhood, to be

ageing as a woman. It looked at eating issues. There was a

choreographer who called this girl who clearly wasn't fat, fatty. That

created a ripple in the audience, which was interesting. I thoutd the

script was interesting and funny. - I thought the script of

interesting and funny. That character was so dimensional, a

screaming gay man a fashion designer. All the characters are

syphers, even the mother who might be interesting, is a sypher, she

never gets a chance to go anywhere. There are wonderful character

actresses in it, the girl who plays Minty, she's a tremendous character.

She's wonderful, I felt sorry for Sally Dexter, a wonderful singer

and actress, she becomes out of it so quickly. She has nothing to do

except go mad. One of the interesting things about it, I was

going in there thinking, there should be proper theatre show, here

you had a show that, and obviously The Girl was a ridiculous power,

and marketed and -- Girl Power was ridiculous and marketed and

manufactured, but there were ten female leads in the West End.

had been through so many transformation, they liked ABBA

ironically, then it was a joke and they were reborn. You had had a

span of 30-odd years where people knew ABBA songs, you don't have it

with The Spice Girls. It is a narrower audience. It is the same

with We Will Rock You, a whole load of back catalogue songs, whether

you like them or not, you know the songs. This show wasn't aimed at me,

I'm a middle-aged bloke, it is aimed at 30-something women, who

remember The Spice Girls, it was interesting to note the tone of the

laughter and heckles, it was very much a woman's audience. What it

did at times was take good songs of the Spice Girls and change them

into ballads and torch songs? think it betrays the songs. Didn't

you think that Viva Forever! Was good? At some level it has to. If

you have The Spice Girls, bubble gum pop, lively and dance along,

you have to create a format to sing those songs straight. Only in the

encore, when everybody has a good time does that happen. All the rest

of the time they are being twisted. Spice Up Your Life? It is straight

but odd. It is the only one done straight. We were sitting next to

spice Girl fans, and they didn't recognise them. I felt Spice Up

Your Life was great, and Viva Forever!, done very simply as a

ballad was beautifully sung. I thought it was a great moment.

Mamma Mia!, playing all over the world, on Broadway, will this

travel? The Americans are looking at it, I don't know. I think there

is a great fun musical in there, trying to fight its way out. But at

the moment it's completely lost. I think it will surprise people. I

think it is rubbish, but I think it will go on for quite a while.

Forever! Is running at the Picadilly theatre in London. It is

safe to say that lepblgtddree film director, Alfred Hitchcock, had a

weakness for blondes. Toing the success of film, Grace Kelly in

Rear Window, and others, he signed up an unknown inge new for his film.

In -- there was a dangerous and destructive relationship between

artist and muse, set up in The Girl. The year is 1962, and Hitchcock at

the height of his fame, chooses the inexperienced actress/model, Tippi

Hedren, played by Sienna Miller, to play lead in his most ambitious

film, The Birds. They came down the chimney in fury, as if they wanted

everyone in the house dead. Jones plays the director who coaches his

mu muse, while his wife Alma, played by Imelda Staunton looks on.

Hitchcock's infatuation with his new star intensifies, but when she

rebuffs his advances, the director puts the actress in increasingly

terrifying situations on set. Writer grin net Hughes based her

drama on extensive conversations of surviving cast and crew of

Hitchcock's film, including Tippi Hedren herself. Who recently

described the director as evil and deviant. There is so much I can

teach you through kindness. Is this an apology? For doing whatever it

took to turn you into a movie star? Thank you.

Ultimately it is the story of a director's obsession with his

leading lady. An obsession which threatens to destroy both their

careers. But is the film as gripping as one of the master's own

productions. We're faced here with, as is so

often is the case, two films coming out now, Hitchcock, which tells the

story of Hitchcock around the time of Psycho, and the contention that

his wife Alma got him through Psycho, and this story which tells

a different story of Hitchcock as an evil seducer. Did you get that,

in a sense, do you buy that story? I'm not sure I do, actually. I

think the interesting thing is that they start with, this is based upon

interviews and all that. You see it in films like Argo, this is based

on true incidents, then it goes off and becomes slightly fantastical,

there is a which have of rumour about it rather than factually

accuracy. What was interesting is the performances the best bit about

the film were the performances, especially Imelda Staunton. She was

great, and easily the most interesting character. Playing the

hard-pressed wife. You essentially go go that Hitchcock was an abuser

and bully, and Tippy of the victim/heroine. When you cast

people in those places there is nowhere to go. But Hitchcock's wife,

Imelda Staunton is the on looker, she allows this and knows what is

happening, in effect, she becomes the audience. You could say that

directors are cruel to get the best out of their actors, the scene

where we see Tippi Hedren is in the phone box imagining the birds, she

doesn't know he's letting loose the bird, you can accept that. But the

story that he spent five days with her in the at particular with the

birds flying at her, live birds, it was pretty horrific? I don't

entirely buy this view of Hitchcock. The thing misses out that he was

really a brilliant film maker. That sort of gets lost in this. I think

it is very clear. I didn't feel that. But, obviously that story

about the birds in the at particular is reasonably well

documented. Certainly people were shocked. But what I found

disappointing about this is that if you accept that at this point he

had this strange obsession with her. Then you want to know a bit more

about it than the film actually tells you. You don't really

understand him I don't think. You don't terribly understand Tippi

Hedren, who was the blonde that got to him, and who did rebuff him and

was very strong at a time when it would have been very easy not to

rebuff him and go along with it for the sake of her career. The

fascination of the relationship, which they have decided to make a

film about, they don't really explore. And Alma, who is, equally,

the most interesting character, I thought you could go through the

film and not realise she had ever written any scripts with him, or

realise she was involved in the films at all. It gives you the set

up, and it is very beautiful and very arty, but actually, the real

exploration of the psychology of the work, I didn't feel it did.

think that is a good point. I think it grew into itself. Initially it

was very much saying this happened and then this happened and this

happened, and you were going, what's going on for the characters

and psychological motivation. It did address it in the second half

of the movie. There is a wonderful image that Tippi Hedren says,

Sienna Miller, who I thought was brilliant, says about how she feels

he's trying to get inside of her, and squeeze every bit of her out so

he can look out through her eyes. At that point I thought now we will

get a bit of psychological interest. They did deliver a bit on that.

There are lots of issues that were broached, such as the abusive power

of the director. Whether we should forgive that. Whether we, like

everyone else is complicit in that. Those relationships exist all the

time, and in Hollywood, she put up with much more because she wanted

to get that break. That was quite believable. I don't think that

Tippi Hedren was ever demured from that point. What is interesting,

the clip you just showed of him in the car. The fact that the director

pushed her, that does happen. casted them as bully and abuser and

victim and heroine. It said that Hitchcock's private life was his

filmic life, that he scares and terrorises people, and this is what

he does in the film. They reinforce this by adding in all the homeage

shots, when she appears in the shower, you know, or the shots from

Vertigo. They use the same kind of light defusers. What about the idea

people lieblg to see films like A Week ska with Marylin, and the film

about Kenneth Williams, because it is too late to know that. It is

like if they had been on Twitter, we want to peak behind the curtain

and see what is going on. It is not that much of a shock, if you have

watched Vertigo, Hitchcock puts in a film that there is a certain

issue there. There is an obsession with making

and destroying people, it is in his film. It feeling a partial view of

him to me. They fundamentally failed in the fact that it wasn't

Spence enough, there wasn't enough Spence at all, you cast these two

people in the roles and -- suspence at all, you cast these two people

in roles, and they make the homeage shot and they are not Alfred

Hitchcock. I didn't know if she would succumb, that was suss

senseful? What a fascinating character, single mother bringing

up her child. This strong figure decides to go along with it because

she wants her career. That is not explored either. Tippi Hedren

herself talking about Hitchcock is more interesting than this film.

The Girl is on BBC Two own Boxing Day. Thank you to my guests. That's

all from us tonight, and for this year. We will be back with a

special programme on the 4th of January, when I will be talking to

Billy Connelly about his life on stage and screen, and his starring

role in the new film Quartet. Did Pamela Stevenson save your life?

yeah, no question. That was when it came to alcohol. Yes, but when you

met her and fell in love with her, you were still drinking for

Scotland? Ha ha. I'm ever so sorry I came here. It is like confession!