Double Take (2009)

How do you make a movie in which a director, who has been dead for 30 years, plays the main part? Double Take tries to give a possible answer to this question. Alfred Hitcock “stars” in this movie where he meets an older version of himself. The makers have managed to find an interesting way to bring their story to life.

As Hitchock usually only appear in one scene during his own movies and the other appearances were on his TV show, there wasn’t a lot of footage that could be used. To be able to tell the story the decisicion was made to hire a “sound alike”, who tells the story about him meeting himself. During this story the choice has been made to sometimes show images of Hitchcock, but for the most part new shots have been used, like a hat rolling down the stairs. Besides this story the movie tells a couple of other stories as well. The film is a mix of coffee commercials, cold war tension, promotion for The Birds and shots of an Alfred Hitchcock lookalike. It’s a strange mix of images which gave me a “Twilight Zone” feeling.

Is Double Take a film which you’d want to see? It’s definitely not a movie everyone will like, because it isn’t very cohesive and ordered. What it does manage to do is give an interesting image of the time in which Hitchcock lived. The story “he” tells isn’t very long, but does raise the suspense during the movie. Double Take doesn’t reach the levels of the master it uses as its main protagonist, but it did manage to keep it all interesting. I was entertained.

Score: 7