STAGE FRIGHT (1950)

Mediocre Alfred Hitchcock, yet quite the contentious film. (A problem only explained with SPOILERS; so, consider yourself warned.) As a story, STAGE FRIGHT is like someone’s idea of a Hitchcock film*, just not Hitchcock’s. Think THE PRIZE/’63 rather than NORTH BY NORTHWEST/’59; the ingredients all there, but the measurements off. The basic idea sounds like classic Hitchcock: Innocent Man on the run; Girl Sidekick as helper & love interest; but twisted with the man’s innocence in question and the sidekick’s affections unstable, moving from the panicky suspect & toward the dapper police investigator tracking him. And that polarizing contentious factor? It comes right at the start with a long explanatory flashback as Richard Todd’s man-on-the-run misleads button-nosed Jane Wyman about a murder he’s accused of. In his visualization, inamorata Marlene Dietrich is the guilty party, killing her husband and letting him take the fall. So, is a false flashback a sin against film etiquette? A breach of audience trust? Here it’s the cleverest thing in the pic. (And note how Dietrich's acting goes subtly ‘off’ in these brief scenes.) No, the real problem is sloppy plotting, easy connect-the-dots deduction, and a general lack of suspense. Jane Wyman, a little slow on the uptake, is the acting student who finagles her way into Dietrich’s employ as assistant, hoping to tease out a breakdown or confession. Michael Wilding is amused & amusing as the charming detective, his best scenes with Wyman’s eccentric parents, Sybil Thorndike & Alastair Sim, both fun if hardly passable as Wyman’s parents. Maybe she was adopted. Maybe the film was adopted.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Among mature Hitchcock projects, only TOPAZ /’69 equals this in coming across as somebody else’s idea of echt Hitchcock. That one was largely made as a personal favor by Hitch to Universal honcho Lew Wasserman who’d spent a boodle on the Leon Uris bestseller. And Hitch was in a bad position, hard up for a project after MARNIE thunderously tanked and TORN CURTAIN disappointed. No such explanation for STAGE FRIGHT. Perhaps a simple loss of confidence, with Hitch keeping his head above water after PARADINE CASE, ROPE and UNDER CAPRICORN all underperformed. This made it four in a row.

DOUBLE-BILL: Hitch immediately returned to form (and then some!) in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’51.