Mark Cousins, director of the landmark series “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” lets the master of suspense tell his own story in the new documentary “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock.” It opens at the Quad in Manhattan this Friday, October 25. Go here for showtimes and ticket information.

In the title credits the film is said to be “written and voiced by Alfred Hitchcock.” Of course, Hitchcock, who died in 1980, isn’t really the narrator of the film. Cousins made use of the first person voice to help immerse viewers in a voyage through six decades of the auteur’s works. While watching the film I thought Cousins was employing AI to fake the narration, but he actually used an impressionist (Alistair McGowan) to imitate the great director’s voice, one well known because of his humorous introductions to the 361 episodes of his TV show (which ran for ten years beginning in 1955) and his appearances in the trailers for some of his films. Indeed, up until the 1970’s he was the most famous film director in the world.

Early on we’re shown a scene from “The Wrong Man,” his “most serious picture” (it had a documentary feel to it), showing Henry Fonda’s character enter a house and seemingly shutting the out-of-frame door behind him; it’s a trick shot Hitchcock says he employed to encourage the viewer to lose themselves in the world of the movie. Unlike other docs about the filmmaker which focused on his technique and the visual aspects of his work, this one studies less technical topics of his more than 50 features: escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfillment and height. 

Cousins expertly matches the director’s talking points with hundreds of clips, usually from the films discussed but sometimes including other scenes to support Hitchcock’s claims. Often a single film will contain examples of several of the six themes explored here. In “North by Northwest” we see the famous crop duster sequence. Cary Grant escapes from the armed crop dusting plane into a field of corn. The scene is introduced by a high aerial shot demonstrating how remote the landscape is. The escape scene on Mount Rushmore also qualifies as a perilous high place and the shot earlier looking down from the top of the United Nations building is a masterpiece of abstraction.

One of my favorite depictions of loneliness (though not shown in the film) is that of the farmer’s wife (clearly abused by her husband) who falls for Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) in “The 39 Steps,” (1935) giving him her husband’s coat to keep him warm as he escapes through the Scottish Highlands. Screenwriter Robert Towne has said “that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with ‘The 39 Steps.'”

Desire in Hitchcock’s films has inspired a huge amount of scholarship, often used to illustrate the psychoanalytic principles advanced by Freud and Lacan. The account explored by the director is only slightly “dimebook Freud.” Often listed as the best film ever made, “Vertigo” is a textbook on the psychology of desire (plus height!) Fulfillment usually has to wait until the end of his films: the handcuffed couple holding hands at the end of “The 39 Steps,” or the rescue of Ben’s son at the end of “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Alfred’s long, happy marriage to Alma (a former editor who was involved in the conception of all his films) is cited as an example of fulfillment in his own life, though, not surprisingly, there is no mention of his own reported emotional abuse of actress Tippi Hedren (who played a classic cold Hitchcock blonde in “Marnie” and “The Birds”) after rejecting his advances. Most audiences will also be learn for the first time that he was involved in a controversial film about Nazi concentration camps in 1945.

The Cousins documentary serves as a perfect introduction to those just discovering the work of one of the cinema’s greatest artists. For those of us who are already well acquainted with it, “My Name is Alfred Hitchcock” is like spending two wonderful hours with a friend we haven’t seen in years.