Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009)

A film doesn't have to consist of original footage to be an artistic work. Double Take splices together Cold War newsreels, fatuous adverts and images from Hitchcock's films, linking all three with the iconic director's intros to Alfred Hitchcock Presents to illuminate both the era and Hitchcock's own productions with their singular preoccupations. Ingenious editing makes a story gel in which Hitchcock is unsettled by meeting his double, but the real interest is in the stock footage that surrounds the device, the weight of repetition acting hypnotically until you're pulled under into a world that by all rights should have imploded instead of evolving.

7/10