...260 tautly written pages of biographical fact, film criticism, character analysis and just enough well-sourced quirky gossip — none of it new, but much of it delicious ... Ackroyd blends plenty of thoughtful insight into the mix ... a masterful book on the Master of Suspense: like all good movies, it’s over too soon.
Ackroyd’s volume is slim but insightful, no more than a character portrait but guided by a novelist’s skills of characterization and texture ... Ackroyd does a lovely job of bringing a blush to the cheek of his early infatuation with Ingrid Bergman ... [Ackroyd] is thrillingly alive to what he calls 'the true music' of Hitchcock.
Ackroyd can write intelligently and evocatively about these films...But after at least 35 books, his productivity may be taking a toll. The prose is not always as crisp as it should be ... He might also have paid more attention to Hitchcock’s work as a whole ... more astute on his subject’s psychological makeup than on what makes us want to read about him: his approach to the films he made.
...offers no new revelations, but it provides a smart, fluent overview of the director’s life and art, and the mysterious dynamic between the two. As with other serious books on Hitchcock, this volume will be judged, partly, by how closely the author’s take on various films accords with the reader’s own ... Mr. Ackroyd does deftly situate Hitchcock’s work in the rapidly emerging film industry.
For all its insight, Peter Ackroyd’s biography is a deft synthesis of numerous other studies of 'Alfred the Great'; it is well written, however, and unusually well attuned to the religious element.
