Distinguished barrister Gregory Peck risks his reputation & his marriage when he falls for new client Alida Valli, a mysterious beauty who may be guilty of murdering her husband. Smoothly made, in fact, too smoothly made, the last film Alfred Hitchcock made under contract for David O. Selznick is very much the producer’s pic. Selznick personally wrote the 'veddy' British script (‘She’s trying to cover up for that filthy swine!’) based on a ‘30s novel M-G-M once optioned for Garbo, yet the basic set up strikingly mirrors Selznick’s own struggle between estranged wife Irene Mayer Selznick and new love Jennifer Jones. If only the film were as interesting as Selznick’s home life. Miscast male leads don’t help: Peck in a role that begs for a Ronald Colman; Louis Jourdan far too glamorous as Valli’s guilt-ridden lover. (Hitch wanted an earthy Robert Newton type for a note of perversity in the illicit affair.) And female leads not so much miscast as under-cast: Valli a substitute Ingrid Bergman; poor Ann Todd, as Peck’s loyal wife, like Joan Fontaine with a blobby nose. Hitch does pulls off some striking docu-flavored touches going thru jail procedures with the just arrested Valli*, and Selznick adds a few deviant touches to Charles Laughton’s ‘hanging judge’ and fragile wife Ethel Barrymore. But the film must have seem hopelessly dated even when it came out. Selznick’s first major flop as indie producer, painfully out of touch with the post-WWII audience. Hitch would quickly catch up with the changing Zeitgeist; Selznick never did.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Hitch found a proper use for this documentary prison flavor in THE WRONG MAN/’56. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-wrong-man-1956.html
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