Do we like them?

Do we like Alfred Hitchcock?

Our score: 4 out of 10. No harmful words of his own turned up and there was real good, but the Hedren allegations, which are disputed and can't be tested now, hold the score down.

Hitchcock is the director the AFI honoured in 1979 with its seventh Life Achievement Award, calling him a master almost without peer in suspense. He's been dead since 1980, so there's no recent drama to report: nothing new on him lately. What's left is the work and the argument over the man.

The big stain is Tippi Hedren, his star in The Birds and Marnie. In her 2016 memoir she alleged he tried to kiss her in a limo, had a door built between his office and her dressing room, and assaulted her in her dressing room during Marnie. She said she stayed quiet then because nobody had words like harassment or stalking back in the day. There was no reply from Hitchcock, who died decades earlier.

Hedren later said he had “a dark side that was really awful”, and that he kept her under contract so she couldn't work for others for two years. She also said “He ruined my career, but he didn't ruin my life.” The second part is worth noting: she has been blunt about him without wanting to be defined by him.

It's contested. Two biographers argue her claims aren't backed by others who worked on the films or by the shooting schedules, and defenders accused her of seeking attention. But biographer Patrick McGilligan, who isn't a hater, said Hitchcock was “capable of questionable behavior”, and described unwanted kissing and groping of women. Writer Edward White argues his conduct toward young actresses and secretaries was real and was enabled by the industry around him.

On the harm test, there's nothing from his own mouth or acts that attacks any group. Critics read villains in Rope and Strangers on a Train as gay-coded, which is an old and uncomfortable Hollywood habit, but that's about his films under the Hays Code, not his statements. Plenty of queer writers shaped his work, and one producer argues he was drawn to their sense of “his own otherness”.

The good stuff is real. In 1945 he worked, unpaid according to the film's director, on the editing of a documentary on the Nazi death camps, which was shelved and only aired decades later as Memory of the Camps. His role is not entirely clear, so don't oversell it, but it's a serious thing to have lent his name and time to.