The Wrong Man

The Wrong Man (1956) 

Notable cast/crew: Henry Fonda as Manny Balestrero.  Vera Miles as Rose Balestrero.  She would also appear in Psycho.  Anthony Quayle as Frank D O'Connor.  Harold J Stone as Det Lt Bowers.  Nehemiah Persoff as Gene Conforti.  Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.

Running time: 105 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: This is the true story of Manny Balestrero, a man wrongly accused of a string of robberies.  Manny is a bass player at the Stork Club.  He's scraping by to provide for his wife and two kids.  His wife needs some dental work so he goes to the insurance office to see if they can borrow against the policy to cover it.  At the office, the teller behaves oddly and goes to the other tellers.  Several of the women there think he's the same man who robbed the office previously.  They give Manny the information he's asking for about the policy, and he leaves.  They call the police who then go and grab Manny as he walks up to his home.

J'accuse!

The police do a second-rate job of investigating going solely on biased eyewitnesses while having zero physical evidence tying Manny to the robberies.  They railroad him and arrest him for the robberies.  He's bailed out by his family.  As the try to establish his alibi, the only men who could verify his whereabouts have since died although inexplicably no one points out he couldn't have known those other men were all vacationing at the same hotel unless he was there himself.

His wife, Rose begins to crack under the strain of how everything seems stacked against them.  She thinks Manny is going to be found guilty no matter what the evidence, and they have no money to pay for a defense.  She eventually has a nervous breakdown.  He has her committed while the trial is pending.

At trial, Manny notices no one is really paying any attention to the case.  He feels as if he has been abandoned by the system, by his family, maybe even by God.  Amidst all this, a juror stands up during testimony and asks if they have to listen to all this.  A mistrial is declared possibly sparing Manny from being found guilty.  While he awaits a retrial, the real burglar strikes again.  He confesses, and Manny is cleared.  The damage has been done, though.  His life has been upended because of someone else's mistake.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Technically not a cameo, Hitchcock introduces the movie.  With this being based on a true story, he didn't want his normal cameo to distract from the seriousness of the story.

Hitchcock themes: 

• Man wrongfully accused

Verdict: This is a powerful movie.  Henry Fonda is fantastic playing Manny.  He's very believable and sympathetic as a man who has done nothing but been wronged at every step of the way by the real crook, the witnesses, and the police.  Vera Miles does a nice job going through the slow collapse into hysteria.  You feel for both of them knowing they're fighting the system alone.

Many scenes were filmed in Jackson Heights, the neighborhood where Manny lived when he was accused.  Most of the prison scenes were filmed among the convicts in a New York City prison in Queens.  Although based on a true story, Hitchcock deliberately left out some of the information that pointed to Manny's innocence to heighten the tension.

This was Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros.  It completed a contract commitment that had begun with two films produced for Transatlantic Pictures and released by Warner Brothers: Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).  After The Wrong Man, Hitchcock returned to Paramount Pictures.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Vertigo

The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) 

Notable cast/crew: James Stewart as Dr Benjamin McKenna.  This was his third of four films with Hitchcock.  Doris Day as Josephine Conway McKenna.  Daniel Gelin as Louis Bernard.  Carolyn Jones as Cindy Fontaine.  Costumes by Edith Head.  Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.

Running time: 120 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: This is a remake of Hitchcock's 1934 film, this time set in Morocco with Doris Day belting out "Que Sera, Sera".

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Watching the acrobats

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder
• Blondes

Verdict: This is an okay film, but it's always been hard for me to get into it after having seen the earlier version with Peter Lorre.  Outside of Stewart and Day, the rest of the cast is relatively unknown to American audiences.  The film won an Academy Award for Best Song for "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)".  This is one of the "Five Lost Hitchcocks".  In response to fellow filmmaker François Truffaut's assertion that aspects of the remake were by far superior, Hitchcock replied "Let's say the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional."

Bernard Herrmann, the composer, makes an appearance as the conductor of the orchestra at the climax of the film.  Herrmann was given the option of composing a new cantata to be performed during the film's climax.  However, he found Arthur Benjamin's cantata Storm Clouds from the original 1934 film to be so well suited to the film that he declined, although he did expand the orchestration and insert several repeats to make the sequence longer.

In one of the most memorable scenes, the plot calls for Louis Bernard to be discovered as "not Moroccan" because he was wearing black makeup. The makeup artists couldn't find a black substance that would come off easily, and so they painted the fingers of James Stewart white, so that he would leave pale streaks on the other man's skin.  This idea was suggested by Daniel Gélin who played Bernard.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: The Wrong Man

The Trouble with Harry

The Trouble with Harry (1955) 

Notable cast/crew: Edmund Gwenn as Captain Albert Wiles.  This was his fourth and final film with Hitchcock spanning 24 years.  John Forsythe as Sam Marlowe.  He would also appear in Topaz.  Mildred Natwick as Miss Ivy Gravely.  Jerry Mathers as Arnie Rogers.  Shirley MacLaine as Jennifer Rogers.  Costumes by Edith Head.  Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.

Running time: 100 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: On an Autumn day in the Vermont countryside, Arnie walks through the woods with his toy gun.  He hears gunshots and runs frightened through the woods.  There he stumbles across a body lying on the ground bleeding from the temple.  He runs off towards home.  Captain Wiles has been out hunting rabbits, and he next finds the body and thinks he killed him accidentally.  Miss Gravely comes by as he's moving the man, Harry Worp.  Wiles wants to bury him and hide the whole thing.  She agrees and heads home after inviting him to tea.  Before Wiles can move him, Arnie comes back with his mother, Jennifer.  They know the man, and she's happy Harry is dead.  Next comes along a man reading a book who trips over Harry but doesn't notice him as he gets up and continues walking and reading.  Last a hobo comes through and steals Harry's shoes.

Trick of the lens

Later that afternoon, artist Sam Marlowe goes up on the hillside to sketch the scenery and finds Harry.  Captain Wiles had fallen asleep waiting for everyone to stop passing through.  Wiles awakens and tells Marlowe he thinks he shot Harry.  They decide to check with Jennifer to see whether she plans to notify the police.  If not, they'll bury him.  Before they can hide the body, the man reading, who Marlowe identifies as a doctor, walks through, trips over the body again, and goes along on his way.

Jennifer was married to Harry's brother, who died.  Harry married her to take care of her and Arnie, but wouldn't perform his husbandly duties.  She left him, but he pursued her.  When he tracked her down, she hit him over the head with a milk bottle.  He staggered off into the woods where he died.  Marlowe and Wiles return and bury Harry that evening.  Once they have him buried, Wiles realizes he shot a can, a sign, and a rabbit.  All three of his shots accounted for, and none for Harry.  So they dig him back up.  Looking at the body closer, they see where he was struck in the head, not shot.  Worried that Jennifer or Miss Gravely might be blamed, they bury Harry again.

Miss Gravely thinks she killed Harry because she hit him over the head with her spiked hiking shoe when he, dazed from being hit by Jennifer, assaulted her in the woods.  She decides that she and the Captain should dig him up and report it as self-defense so everything is square with the law.  When they tell Marlowe and Jennifer, Marlowe is concerned the details of Jennifer's marriage will come out.  So they all bury Harry again.

The deputy shows up at the town store with the shoes the hobo stole saying he caught the hobo who took him where the body was, but there was no body there.  The conspirators debate what to do next, and during this all, Marlowe and Jennifer decide to get married.  However, they need Harry to be declared dead for them to get married, so Harry gets dug up again.

They decide to clean him up before reporting him dead, but the doctor comes wandering through again and this time notices the body.  With his poor eyesight in the dark, he agrees to meet them at Jennifer's house to examine the body and tell them the cause of death.  They clean Harry up before the doctor arrives.  Before he shows up, the deputy comes by asking about the sketch Marlowe drew of Harry that matches the hobo's description of the missing body.  They confuse the slow-witted deputy enough to get him to leave.  Wiles had the presence of mind to swipe the shoes from the deputy's car before he leaves.  The doctor arrives and determines Harry died of natural causes.

They lay Harry out in the woods again and have Arnie "discover" him a second time.  Arnie runs home where he will tell Jennifer who will call the deputy, and everything will be okay.

MacGuffin: Harry

Hitchcock cameo: Walking past the artist's stall

Hitchcock themes: None

Verdict: This is a very funny film, dry and deadpan.  It's a pair of romances wrapped inside a black comedy about a dead man no one wants but can't get rid of.  The opening illustrations are excellent and mark this right off the bat as a whimsical film that's going to be different in tone from most of Hitchcock's other work.  The classic shot is of Arnie standing over the body in the background with Harry's feet in the foreground making it look like one person.

This film is well-cast even though Forsythe and MacLaine were not the first choices for the lead roles.  This film marked the film debut of Shirley MacLaine.  It was among the "Five Lost Hitchcocks", and it was one of his favorite films.  The line, "What seems to be the trouble, Captain?" was Hitchcock's favorite line from all his movies.

Location filming in Vermont was hampered by heavy rainfall.  This caused much of the Autumn foliage to be lost, so they recreated it by hand indoors, filming on sets constructed in a local high school gymnasium.  Much of the dialogue recorded there was inaudible due to the rainfall on the tin roof, so a lot of post-recording was necessary.

This was the beginning of the long professional relationship between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann would score every Hitchcock movie from this through Marnie.  This score was Hitchcock's favorite of the eight films they did together.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: The Man Who Knew Too Much

To Catch a Thief

To Catch a Thief (1955) 

Notable cast/crew: Cary Grant as John Robie.  This was his third of four Hitchcock films.  Grace Kelly as Frances Stevens.  This was her third and final film with Hitchcock.  Jessie Royce Landis as Jessie Stevens.  She would also appear in North by Northwest.  John Williams as H H Hughson.  This was his third and final Hitchcock film.  Brigitte Auber as Danielle Foussard.  Costumes by Edith Head.

Running time: 106 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: A cat burglar is making the rounds in the French Riviera.  The police suspect John Robie, a hero of the French Resistance and retired thief whose style was similar to the current thefts.  He eludes the police and looks for help among his old friends from the Resistance.  His old comrades think he's up to his old ways, jeopardizing all of their livelihoods.  Robie believes it is someone who knows him because they know all of his old methods.  He resolves to catch thief himself.

Did you just hit a hobo?

Danielle Foussard is the daughter of one of his comrades.  She resents that Robie lives in luxury despite having been a thief while the rest of them have to work for a living.  She argues with him but helps him get away from the police.

Robie enlists the help of H H Hughson, an insurance inspector, to help him figure out who the next target is going to be.  Robie wants to get a step ahead of the thief and catch them to clear his name.

Robie cozies up to the Stevenses, thinking they are the most likely next targets.  They are, and Robie doesn't catch the thief, heaping more suspicion on him.  He sets a final trap at a masquerade ball.  The thief strikes during the ball, but Robie has disguised his exit by switching places with Hughson.  This allows him to get the drop on the thief.  The thief is Danielle Foussard.  She had been working with her father and Robie's old Resistance friends.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Sitting on the bus next to Cary Grant

Hitchcock themes: 

• Blondes

Verdict: It's an okay film, but it tends to be a bit frivolous.  The scenery is the gorgeous French Riviera, and we spend much of the movie dealing with the Grant-Kelly romance that is superfluous to the plot.

This was Hitchcock's first of five films in the widescreen process VistaVision.  This was Grace Kelly's final film with him. He cast her in Marnie (1964), but by then she was Princess Grace of Monaco.  She withdrew when it became clear that popular opinion disapproved of her making another film.  Ironically, she died in 1982 at age 52 after crashing her vehicle on the same serpentine mountain road as the speeding car sequence in the film's conclusion.

It won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Robert Burks).

French actor Charles Vanel (Bertani) could not speak a word of English.  All of his lines were dubbed.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: The Trouble With Harry

Rear Window

Rear Window (1954) 

Notable cast/crew: James Stewart as LB "Jeff" Jefferies.  This was the second of four films he would make with Hitchcock.  Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont.  This was the second of three consecutive movies she would make with Hitchcock.  Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald.  Costumes by Edith Head.

Running time: 115 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: Jeff is a magazine photographer.  He's laid up with a broken leg with nothing to do but watch his neighbors across the courtyard.  His girlfriend, Lisa, wants him to give up the world-travelling gig.  They have a spat over it, and she leaves him for the night.  Not long after, there is a scream, and the sound of smashing glass followed by silence.

The set

Jeff notices Mr Thorwald leaving in the middle of the night during a downpour.  Thorwald returns an hour later.  He's home for only a minute then leaves again into the night.  He returns again during the night and leaves the following morning with someone who appears to be his wife.

The next day, a neighbor's dog is sniffing and digging at Thorwald's flowers which alarms him.  Jeff becomes concerned that between the odd comings and goings of Thorwald and the sudden absence of his wife that Thorwald has murdered her.  Lisa disbelieves Jeff until she sees Thorwald tying up a trunk in his wife's now empty room.  Jeff calls a police detective he knows to come look things over.  There's no evidence of anything so they continue to watch the apartment.  Thorwald still has all of his wife's jewelry despite her supposedly having gone to the country for her health.

Doyle, the detective, refuses to believe Jeff for lack of any evidence to support his theory.  There are enough witnesses who saw Thorwald put the woman on the train that he thinks Jeff and Lisa have gotten themselves worked up over nothing.  Doyle had intercepted Thorwald's trunk, and there were just clothes, no body.  Later that night, the dog that had been digging at the flowers is found dead, strangled with a broken neck.  The only person who doesn't come outside when the dog's owner screams is Thorwald who sits in the dark in his apartment smoking.

Thorwald's flowers have gotten shorter recently raising more suspicion.  They decide to spook him by leaving a note asking "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?"  They then ring him up and ask him what he did with his wife.  They lure him out of the apartment by insinuating blackmail and arranging to meet him at a hotel.  Thorwald leaves, and Lisa goes over to his apartment to see what's under the flowers.  Lisa finds nothing under the flowers and goes to Thorwald's apartment.  Thorwald returns before she can leave.  Jeff calls the police who arrive before Thorwald can do anything to her.  They take her away, but before they do, she motions to Jeff that she has Mrs Thorwald's wedding ring.  Thorwald sees this and realizes who has been watching him.

Thorwald shows up at Jeff's wanting to know what Jeff wants from him.  Thorwald tries to throw Jeff out the window as the police arrive.  The police get Thorwald, but Jeff falls breaking his other leg.  Thorwald confesses to killing his wife and admits he scattered her body across the city.

MacGuffin: What's buried in the garden?

Hitchcock cameo: Winding a clock in the musician's apartment

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder
• Voyeurism
• Blondes

Verdict: One of Hitchcock's best, this movie has it all: A-list casting, an elaborate set, and a riveting finale.  Those final five minutes where Jeff is helpless and alone as he can hear Thorwald coming up the stairs have you squirming in your seat hoping he can somehow get away.  Jimmy Stewart is much better-cast in this than he was in Rope.  He stands in for the audience as the audience watches him.  Hitchcock explained it as a fairly simple set-up: show Jeff, cut to what he sees, show his reaction.  Because we're watching him watch others we react sympathetically as he does to them which draws us into his story as he is drawn into his neighbors' stories.

Alfred Hitchcock supposedly hired Raymond Burr to play Lars Thorwald because he could be easily made to look like Hitchcock's old producer David O Selznick, who Alfred Hitchcock felt interfered too much.  Ross Bagdasarian played the composer in the studio loft where Hitchcock makes his cameo.  Bagdasarian was a real musician who performed under the name David Seville, and he created Alvin & the Chipmunks.

The entire picture was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction.  The apartment-courtyard set measured 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high, and it consisted of 31 apartments, eight of which were completely furnished.  The courtyard was set 20 to 30 feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.  Alfred Hitchcock had the production company tear out the entire floor of the studio, revealing the basement.  What the audience sees as the courtyard was originally the basement level of the studio.  All the apartments in Thorwald's building had electricity and running water, and they could be lived in.  During the month-long shoot, Georgine Darcy, who played "Miss Torso", lived in her apartment all day, relaxing between takes as if really at home.  While shooting, Hitchcock worked only in Jeff's apartment.  The actors in other apartments wore flesh-colored earpieces so that he could radio his directions to them.

The film was inspired in part by the real-life murder case of Patrick Mahon.  In 1924, in Sussex, England, Mahon murdered his pregnant mistress, Emily Kaye, and dismembered her body.  Hitchcock claimed that Mahon threw the body parts out of a train window piece by piece and burned the head in his fireplace.  Another source, however, states that Mahon quartered the body and stored it in a large trunk then removed internal organs, putting some in biscuit tins and a hatbox and boiling others on the stove.  In addition to Mahon, Hitchcock noted the 1910 case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen also served as an inspiration for the film.  Crippen, an American living in London, poisoned his wife and cut up her body then told police that she had moved to Los Angeles.  Crippen was eventually caught after his secretary, with whom he was having an affair, was seen wearing Mrs. Crippen's jewelry, and a family friend searched unsuccessfully for Mrs. Crippen in California.  After Scotland Yard became involved, Crippen and his mistress fled England under false names and were apprehended on an ocean liner.  Police found parts of Mrs. Crippen's body in her cellar.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: To Catch a Thief

Dial M for Murder

Dial M for Murder (1954) 

Notable cast/crew: Ray Milland as Tony Wendice.  Grace Kelly as Margot Mary Wendice.  This was the first of three consecutive films she would make with Hitchcock.  Robert Cummings as Mark Halliday.  He was previously in Saboteur.  John Williams as Chief Inspector Hubbard.  He would also be in To Catch a Thief with Grace Kelly.

Running time: 104 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: Tony is a famous ex-tennis player.  His wife, Margot, has been having an affair with Mark.  She was being blackmailed by someone who had intercepted a love letter between her and Mark.  Tony begs out of dinner then arranges to meet Swann about a car Swann is selling.  They had been classmates at Cambridge.  It was Tony who intercepted the letter.  He was considering murdering his wife when he found out about her infidelity, but then he came up with a better plan.  He will have Swann, who had been in some criminal trouble, do it for him.  Tony has been following Swann and knows details of his recent criminal activity.  He walks Swann through the plan, Swann surveys the layout, and he agrees to do it.

Call me Ishmael

Tony has arranged for he and Mark to go to a party leaving Margot home alone.  The plan goes off despite some minor snags except that Swann botches the murder and instead winds up dead when Margot's hand finds a pair of scissors and plunges them into his back.

Tony salvages the plan by subtly pointing the police to Margot even going so far as to plant the stolen letter on Swann's body.  Margot is believed to have murdered Swann over the blackmail, and she's convicted of his murder.

Tony slips up by going around paying off accounts which arouses the police's suspicion.  Chief Inspector Hubbard questions him, and Mark accuses Tony of being behind it.  Hubbard is ahead of Mark and has a ruse set up to test Tony.  Tony is to go to the police station to collect Margot's belongings.  While he's gone, Hubbard has Margot try her key on the apartment door, but it doesn't fit the lock.  The key is Swann's that Tony had taken from the body and planted in Margot's purse.  Margot's key is still outside under the steps, and only the person in collusion with Swann would know that.  Tony comes home, and, with Hubbard having swiped his key earlier, uses the key under the steps thus proving his guilt.  Hubbard arrests him, and Margot is exonerated.

MacGuffin: The letter

Hitchcock cameo: In the class reunion photograph

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder
• Charming villain
• Blondes

Verdict: This is a taut suspense flick that is elaborately plotted.  It's very entertaining and stylish.  It's the first color film Hitchcock had made since Under Capricorn, and it's essentially set in one room.  It was adapted from a stage play, and Hitchcock is faithful to the setting.  It kicks off a run of about ten movies that are considered, collectively, the high point of his oeuvre.  Where the movie falls short is none of the characters are likable with the exception of Hubbard.  Swann is a murderous thug, Tony is a coolly detached mastermind, and Mark and Margot are brazenly having an affair under Tony's nose.  They are stylish, urbane, witty, but not sympathetic.  Hubbard, though, arrives late in the movie as the real hero of the film.

There is one overhead shot as Tony explains the plan to Swann that becomes almost a storyboard for the murder.  It's the only shot in the movie like this, and it suggests that as the people in the story are pieces to be maneuvered so are the actors in the film pieces to be maneuvered into place by the director.

Warner Brothers insisted on shooting the movie in 3-D although the craze was fading, and Alfred Hitchcock was sure the movie would be released flat (2-D).  The director wanted the first shot to be that of a close-up of a finger dialing the letter M on a rotary phone, but the 3-D camera would not be able to focus such a close-up correctly.  Hitchcock ordered a giant finger made from wood with a proportionally large dial built in order to achieve the effect.  The 3-D filming explains the prevalence of low-angle shots with lamps and other objects between the camera and the cast members.  There was only a brief, original release in 3-D, followed by a conventional flat release.  The 3-D version was reissued in 1980.

This was originally released in a "roadshow" format, with an intermission halfway through the film.  This was necessitated by the fact most theaters only had two projectors which would normally alternate reels.  So while one projector was being reloaded, the other would continue the film.  3-D required both projectors to be playing simultaneously, so an intermission was needed to reload both projectors with the next reel.

Alfred Hitchcock arranged to have Grace Kelly dressed in bright colors at the start of the film and made them progressively darker as time goes on.  Her clothes express her various moods in the film ending in her drab grey at the end when she has been completely broken into resolution of her pending execution.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Rear Window

I Confess

I Confess (1953) 

Notable cast/crew: Montgomery Clift as Father Michael Logan.  Anne Baxter as Ruth Grandfort.  Karl Malden as Inspector Larrue.  O E Hasse as Otto Keller.

Running time: 94 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: A man lies dead, struck in the head.  A man in priest's garb exits the building.  He removes his garb in an alley to reveal he's wearing a suit underneath.  He heads to a nearby church.  The man is not a priest.  He asks the real priest to hear his confession.  He is known to the priest, Father Logan, having done work at the rectory.  He is Otto Keller, and he confesses to killing the man we saw lying dead.  He went to rob the man's house but was caught in the act and killed him (he claims accidentally) when he tried to call the police.

I give myself a Vulcan mind meld through
half the movie

Keller returns to the scene as he does work in the house and pretends to discover the body.  He then proceeds to frame Father Logan because he knows Logan cannot reveal the truth that he heard in confession.  Compounding the matter is that before he was a priest, Father Logan had an affair with Ruth Granfort.  The murdered man, Villette, knew of it and had been blackmailing Ruth.  Ruth had been meeting with Logan the night of the murder, and she tells this to the police to give him an alibi.  Instead, the police take it as a motive for the murder when the times don't match up exactly.  Two children saw "a priest" leaving the scene adding to the case against him.

Father Logan cannot provide an alibi, cannot reveal what he heard in confession, nor can he even reveal who the murderer is because of his vows.  Despite all of this, the jury finds that his guilt was not proven, and he is found not guilty and released.  Wracked with guilt, Otto's wife tries to reveal the truth.  Otto shoots her dead in the street in front of the courthouse and flees the crowd.  Cornered, he thinks the priest has ratted him out, and he confesses unintentionally to the police.  He is then gunned down.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Walking past in a long shot as part of the opening

Hitchcock themes: 

• Man wrongly accused

Verdict: A mediocre film, it has some moments of interest, but the suspense is largely built around the inability of Father Logan to reveal the truth due to his vows.  He comes across as noble if you agree with that stance, but if you don't, the suspense seems contrived and his own fault.  Either way, his refusal to reveal Otto as the killer results in Alma, Otto's wife, and an unnamed bystander to get shot.  It becomes difficult to care for anyone in this movie, and it becomes a boring, drawn out picture even at 94 minutes.  Montgomery Clift drank during the shooting, and his eyes appear glazed during the ferry scene.  It didn't help that most of his performance boiled down to him sitting there with his hand on his temple looking vacant.  O E Hasse is very good as Otto, at times nearly getting you to care for him until you remember he's a murderer, a liar, and will abuse a priest's vow to keep himself free.  He does an excellent job ranging from nervous anxiety to abject terror to conniving treachery.

In the original play, the priest was hanged and later found to be innocent. This scene had to be eliminated and replaced with another scene due to the censor.  This really gutted the film of what would have been a shocking ending, better than the one they had to make do with.  Cognizant of the difficulty non-Catholics would have in understanding the priest's reluctance to expose Keller, Hitchcock said, "We Catholics know that a priest cannot disclose the secret of the confessional, but the Protestants, the atheists, and the agnostics all say, 'Ridiculous! No man would remain silent and sacrifice his life for such a thing'."

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Dial M for Murder

Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train (1951) 

Notable cast/crew: Farley Granger as Guy Haines.  He was previously in Rope.  Ruth Roman as Ann Morton.  Robert Walker as Bruno Antony.  Leo G Carroll as Senator Morton.  This was his fifth of six Hitchcock films.  Patricia Hitchcock as Barbara Morton.  This is her second of three films for her father.

Running time: 103 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: On a train to New York, Guy and Bruno cross paths.  Bruno knows all about Guy who's a celebrity tennis player.  Guy is trying to get divorced and is already seeing a Senator's daughter.  After a few drinks, Bruno begins expounding on his plan for a perfect murder: a criss-cross where two strangers kill each other's victim so there's no clues or motive to tie it to them.  Guy blows him off as being a nutjob and leaves, but he leaves his lighter in Bruno's compartment.

The picture of obsession

Guy returns to his hometown to settle up with his wife.  She's extorting money from him and stepping out on him.  She tells him she's having someone else's baby, and she's calling off the divorce that she asked for to try to extort more money out of Guy.  Guy storms out and calls Ann to tell her his wife is backing out of the divorce.  He also angrily declares he's so mad he could strangle her.

Bruno heads to New York and, after stalking her at a carnival, strangles her on a small island.  The murder is roughly at 9:30.  Meanwhile, Guy is on a train back down to Washington.  He talks to a professor who is drunk and singing about a goat.  He encounters Bruno who tells him he has murdered his wife.  Bruno is delusional and thinks they agreed to this on the train.

The police question Guy as to his whereabouts, but the professor has now sobered up and can't provide an alibi.  Bruno continues to push Guy to murder his father in return for his having murdered Miriam.  He goes so far as to leave Guy a map of his house with a front door key attached.  He turns up at Guy's tennis match, and while everyone else watches the match, Bruno stares at Guy.  Bruno then insinuates himself into a conversation at the tennis club where Ann realizes who he is.  Bruno proceeds to continue to run his mouth and get caught up in murderous fantasies which makes Guy more concerned he will talk and try to implicate him in the murder.

To get Bruno off his back, Guy agrees to his murder as a ruse.  He shows up at the house and tries to warn Bruno's father.  However, it's Bruno waiting in the room not his father.  He decides since Guy won't do his murder he should take responsibility for Miriam's.  Ann tries to tell Bruno's mother what he's done, but she's dotty and lets it go right over her head.

Bruno is going to plant Guy's lighter at the scene of the murder to implicate him, and it turns into a race to the carnival grounds.  Guy and the police arrive at the same time while Bruno is waiting for the boat to the island.  The boat operator recognizes Bruno from that night and goes to alert the police.  Bruno panics and heads to the carousel where he sees Guy and the police.  A wild shot from a policeman kills the carousel operator sending it careening out of control.  An engineer crawls under the carousel and trips the emergency brake causing the whole thing to explode and crash.  Bruno is mortally wounded in the crash, but even dying tries to accuse Guy.  The lighter in his hand reveals his lie and proves Guy's innocence.

MacGuffin: Guy's lighter

Hitchcock cameo: Struggling to get his cello case on board the train

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder
• Stairs
• Charming villain
• Mother issues

Verdict: A very entertaining movie, it has a lot of Hitchcock's touches that make this a memorable film.  Farley Granger is good although not quite as forceful as he was in Rope, but Robert Walker is outstanding as Bruno.  He portrays a very complex character.  The same man that pops a kid's balloon just to be nasty then helps a blind man cross the street.  He can seem like a weak dandy, and then evince dominant menace in an instant.  Unfortunately, this was the last full feature for Robert Walker who died eight months after filming finished from an allergic reaction to a drug.

There are a number of impressive shots in the film.  The strangulation scene is still studied in film classes today.  Instead of showing the murder directly, Miriam's glasses are knocked off, and we watch the strangulation reflected in the lenses of her glasses.  First, Hitchcock got the exterior shots in Canoga Park using both actors, then later he had Laura Elliott (Miriam) alone report to a soundstage where there was a large concave reflector set on the floor.  The camera was on one side of the reflector, Elliott was on the other, and Hitchcock directed Elliott to turn her back to the reflector and "float backwards, all the way to the floor... like you were doing the limbo."  Hitchcock then had the two elements double printed.

There are two shots involving Bruno that stand out.  In the first, he stalks Guy in Washington, DC.  Guy sees him at a distance standing in front of the Jefferson Memorial.  The stark white gleam of the monument contrasts with the dark figure of Bruno standing in front of it.  Hitchcock used this play of light and dark throughout the movie.  In the second scene, Bruno stalks Guy at a tennis match.  As everyone else is watching the match, their heads back and forth to follow the volleys, Bruno stares fixedly at Guy.  He is the only one not watching the match, and he's the only one not moving in the shot.  It has a very unnerving effect on Guy and the viewer, and it's that silent menace that adds tension and suspense to the film.

The stunt where the man crawls under the carousel was not done with trick photography.  Alfred Hitchcock claimed that this was the most dangerous stunt ever performed under his direction, and he would never allow it to be done again.  The carousel explosion was done using miniatures and background projection, acting close-ups and other inserts, all of it put together by film editor William Ziegler.  Hitchcock filmed a toy carousel blown up by explosives.  This was enlarged and projected onto a screen with actors spread around in front of it so that the effect is a group of bystanders observing plaster horses and passengers being hurled about.  "Hitchcock told me that this scene was the most personally frightening moment for him in any of his films", writes biographer Charlotte Chandler.  "The man who crawled under the out-of-control carousel was not an actor or a stuntman, but a carousel operator who volunteered for the job.  'If the man had raised his head even slightly', Hitchcock said, 'it would have gone from being a suspense film into a horror film'."

The goat song is always a personal pleasure as it's a song my grandfather used to sing when I was little.  I still know all the words to it, and this movie is the only place I have ever heard it outside of my grandfather singing it.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: I Confess

Stage Fright

Stage Fright (1950) 

Notable cast/crew: Jane Wyman as Eve Gill.  Marlene Dietrich as Charlotte Inwood.  Michael Wilding as Ordinary Smith.  He was previously in Under Capricorn.  Richard Todd as Jonathon Cooper.  Alastair Sim as Commodore Gill.  Patricia Hitchcock as Chubby Bannister.

Running time: 110 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: A car speeds through London carrying Eve and Jonathon away from the police.  Jonathon recounts the events that triggered their flight.  Charlotte Inwood has shown up at his flat with blood stains on her dress.  She claims her husband had assaulted her in a quarrel over Jonathon, and she killed him in self-defense.  Jonathon counsels her to go to the theater and perform as if nothing had happened.  He goes to her place to get her another dress that isn't blood-stained.  While there, he tampers with the scene to make it look as if there had been a break-in.  Unfortunately, in doing this he's seen by the maid.  He returns to Charlotte and keeps her bloody dress.  When the police arrive, he flees with the dress and goes to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to look for Eve.

Which story did I tell you?

She drives him to her father's boathouse where he can hide out until things can get straightened out.  Her father agrees to help and notices the blood stain appears to have been smeared on the dress.  This makes them distrust Charlotte's story, and they consider going to the police.  Jonathon throws the dress into the fire instead.

The police investigate Charlotte, and she tells them Jonathon did it in a jealous rage.  After they leave, her agent tells her the truth can't come out.  In the meantime Jonathon has gone on the run again.  He turns up backstage at Charlotte's performance.  She tells him to get out of the country and lay low until her show's run is over.  He tells her he didn't destroy the blood-stained dress, and he threatens her declaring that he's in charge as long as he has the dress.

To get the police onto Charlotte, Eve's father decides to spook her in front of the police with a doll wearing a dress stained like hers was.  The police get the story from the Gills and set a trap in place to get Charlotte to confess.  Except she doesn't confess.  She says she was there when Jonathon killed her husband.  Jonathon is at the theater, and Eve helps him hide in the basement.

As the police search for them, it is divulged that Jonathon has killed before.  Jonathon confesses to Eve saying that he has always had problems with rage, and Charlotte, knowing this, used him to kill her husband.  Fleeing from the police again, he is on the stage when the safety curtain comes down attempting to cut off his exit.  Instead it crushes him, killing him.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Walking past Eve Gill and giving her a funny look

Hitchcock themes: 

• Murder

Verdict: The one thing that always comes up with this movie is the false flashback.  Technically, it's not a flashback in the sense of the character's memory being shown, but it is a visual representation of the story he's telling.  Therein, it is not the director who is lying to the audience per se, but it is the character who is lying to another character.  The audience is tangentially being lied to since they are not in on the lie until the denouement.  Either way, this was controversial.  The audience at the time had not experienced seeing something on screen which turned out to be false, and they did not always respond well to it.  Hitchcock came to regret it because at the moment of revelation, he felt it turned the audience completely against the character making him an unsympathetic, irredeemable villain.  This left nothing to resolve accept the capture/death of the character without any chance for the audience to hope for his escape or redemption.  Viewing this now sixty years on, I think it's a fantastic narrative device, and it really makes the twist have that much more of an impact to find out that everything we knew was a lie.  The Matrix used a variation of this idea to great effect, for a more recent example.

The movie's opening has a safety curtain rising to reveal the real world which is a brilliant use of imagery reminding us we're watching a movie and not reality.  In a way it foreshadows the false flashback on one level, and it also foreshadows the curtain falling literally and figuratively at the end of the film.

Another memorable shot starts on the near side of Jonathon's car as he arrives at Charlotte's apartment in the flashback.  The camera moves in over the car and follows Richard Todd up the steps, through the door, and into the building.  The shot is capped by Todd reaching behind him and "closing" the door behind the camera (a brilliant touch done with foley work to complete the illusion).

Marlene Dietrich sings an original Cole Porter song titled "The Laziest Girl in Town" which became a signature piece for her later in her career.  It also became the piece Mel Brooks parodied in Blazing Saddles with Madeline Kahn which makes the scene unintentionally hilarious now.

The film also gave rise to one of the great putdowns in Hollywood history.  Marlene Dietrich allegedly said, "I did one film for Alfred Hitchcock.  Jane Wyman was in it.  I heard she'd only wanted to do it if she were billed above me, and she got her wish.  Hitchcock didn't think much of her.  She looks too much like a victim to play a heroine, and God knows she couldn't play a woman of mystery.  That was my part.  Miss Wyman looks like a mystery nobody has bothered to solve."

Patricia Hitchcock, Alfred's daughter, made her screen debut here.  She was studying drama in England at the time, and with the film being made there, he was able to cast her in a minor role.  She laughingly stated in an interview on the DVD that her father was so particular about his films that he would not have put her in the picture unless she was right for the part.  This was the last film Hitchcock made in England until 1971's Frenzy.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Strangers on a Train