Why Hitchcock fans should avoid watching The Girl

Hitchcock fans should probably not see the HBO film "The Girl" because it will forever tarnish and besmirch your sense of the director and his accomplishments, but aren't we all Hitchcock fans? Watch it and beware. There's no doubt that Hitchcock was by by no means an actor's director - I'm sure he's written, in a sly and dry manner, that actors were for him essentially props, part of the look of the film. He had his films sketched out shot by shot, and then he arranged the actor in the frame and shot his dailies. That is his own exaggeration of course, but there's a lot of truth - his films to seem cold and inhuman, even cruel at times, and he's very uninterested in developing relationships between characters or depths within characters - we accept his films for their greatness, but we don't warm up to them. The Girl is about H's relationship with Tippi Hedren and The Girl is about their work together on The Birds and Marnie: H. starts off as a debonair and witty old Englishman who casts Hedren and charms her and invites her into his home, meeting Mrs. H, whom he presents as his near-equal partner in casting and direction. But gradually he comes on to her more directly and grotesquely; when she pushes him away, he takes out his anger on her during the filming, eventually literally torturing her through more than 60 takes of scene in which she's attacked by live birds. On one level, it shows his dedication to getting the perfect shot (as well as his cruelty and indifference toward actors - Bresson known for the same ruthlessness, BTW), and on another - less explored by cineastes - it shows his pettiness and perversion: he's not looking for the perfect shot, in fact he's endangering his whole project by torturing his star for personal vengeance. H has many vulgar and nasty outbursts, as well as some drunken scenes of self-pity in which he laments his homeliness (in an industry surrounded by the glamorous) - and we see this dark side of H., compared with the public avuncular and witty British image that he so carefully crafted. It all seems to make sense, but I don't know - perhaps the film (and the book on which is it's based) took many liberties with the known facts. H's work still stands, but this film - rightly or wrongly - has made the pedestal a lot more wobbly.