Double Take/Vertigo

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More About

• The Birds (Movie)
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Jorge Luis Borges
• North by Northwest
• Johan Grimonprez

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Alfred Hitchcock lives! The very cleverly assembled hybrid Double Take samples the director’s old movie cameos and TV show intros, adds a body double and vocal impersonator, then grafts them all onto a story by Jorge Luis Borges. All the machinery is revealed, yet director Johan Grimonprez creates a neat little fugue of time-traveling implausibility and murder. “If you should meet your double,” says one of several Hitchcocks here, “two of you is one too many.” Meaning someone has to die. Generous use of newsreels and citations from The Birds add a Cold War context, too: There are two pairs of doppelgängers, Hitch vs. Hitch, and the USA vs. USSR. Thus, “It’s the murderer who will tell the story”—whoever strikes first, whoever survives. (Our political system is represented by old Folger’s Coffee ads that Hitchcock mocks, but they’re actually quite funny.) Between the Borges framework, a new screenplay, and the quippy old director, it can be hard to tease out the lines of authority. Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo follows tonight at 8:30 p.m. Other repertory titles through Monday include North by Northwest, The Birds, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
Fri., Oct. 8, 7 p.m., 2010