One of those frustrating films more interesting to discuss than see.* A somber ‘wrong man’ murder case, Rex Harrison is buried under a mountain of circumstantial evidence when his mistress turns up dead and he initially lies about the relationship to protect loyal wife Lilli Palmer. Just off B’way’s BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE and at the height of their theatrical glamor, this real-life married couple make unlikely suburban middle-class stiffs, especially for the workaday realism scripter Nunnally Johnson was aiming at. The film is less forced in a few film noir sequences with serial killer Anthony Dawson going about his deadly business and later when he buds up with Lilli’s worried wife. Very creepy. If only untested directors Reginald Beck & Anthony Bushell had a stronger approach to the material. They mostly just walk thru and hope the solid acting will pull them along. (And the hastily added wraparound segments with an American reporter reading up on the case only makes things worse.) Harrison & Palmer must have been hoping for a change of pace from their sophisticated theatrical offerings, but the film simply isn’t good enough. (They’d have better luck with THE FOUR POSTER next year.)
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Three of those ‘discussables’ involve Alfred Hitchcock. Cinematographer Wilkie Cooper, fresh from STAGE FRIGHT/’50 under Hitch, shows how hit-and-miss he was without a firm taskmaster. On the other hand, Hitch may have gotten the idea to cast Anthony Dawson as Grace Kelly’s putative strangler in DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54 here. Finally, for the sort of quotidian miscarriage of justice tale Nunnally Johnson was aiming for, see Hitchcock’s habitually underrated THE WRONG MAN/’56, mostly written by Maxwell Anderson.
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