Double Take Review
By David Kempler
Killing Him Softly
Good evening. Those were the droll opening words of the television show, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Hitchcock once said, "Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some." That sums up Hitch on his show.
Johan Grimonprez captures the flavor of that show in his quasi-documentary, Double Take", that pre-supposes a scenario where Hitchcock confronts his identical double. "If you meet your double, you must kill him, or he will kill you" is the stated mantra of the film and Grimonprez creates an eerie fable based on this scenario, only this time Hitchcock is in front of the camera instead of behind it.
Where the director might lose some of the audience is by tying together the Cold War and American's propensity to see Communism in everything during the 1960's. There was so much cutting back and forth between Hitchcock's films, his public appearances, made-up skits, and the news of the 50's and 60's, that it sometimes felt like a puzzle with very loose connections binding it together.
The constant bombardment of the Cold War, combined with the droll sense of humor that was an integral part of Hitch's persona, reminded me of how similar subjects were viewed in the documentary "Atomic Café", which chronicled in great detail America's nuclear testing and how the country reacted to the fears of imminent attack by the Soviets.
At times a tad clunky, and desperately trying to convince us that we might be watching a great Hitchcock film, Grimonprez's film does manage to attain a degree of creepiness on the Hitchcockian meter. Incorporating the brilliant music of Bernard Herrmann, who scored most of Hitchcock's films, goes a long way towards establishing the desired mood.
"Double Take" is extremely well done and in some ways artsy enough to have been an original Hitchcock production. It's not for everyone, but if you're a fan of the great Hitch, you could do a lot worse than taking this one in.
