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