The Paradine Case - film review

The Paradine Case is a 1948 film by Alfred Hitchcock, in which the Master of Suspense tried his hand at a courtroom drama. It's an American film, with notable American actors in two of the leading roles, but it's set in Britain, mainly at the Old Bailey and in a somewhat thinly evoked Cumberland (where one of the locals speaks in a bizarre mixture of cod-Northern accents - dear old Hitchcock may have been a Brit, but I don't think he had much of a clue about the North of England.)

The set-up is this. A wealthy blind man has been poisoned. His attractive foreign wife (played by Alida Valli, credited simply as Valli) is charged with his murder. Charles Coburn is her solicitor, and he hires Tony Keane (Gregory Peck), a top defence barrister, to represent her. Things start to go awry when Tony unwisely falls in love with his client, much to the distress of his wife. She is played by Ann Todd, who was born in Hartford, thus making her one of the very few famous actresses to hail from my old stamping ground, Northwich!

Tony travels to the scene of the crime in the Lake District, where he encounters the deceased's moody valet (Louis Jourdan), whose bizarre behaviour seems highly suspicious.  There are various possibilities. The accused may be guilty, she may have conspired with the valet, the valet may be guilty, or the dead man may have committed suicide. The main focus, however, is not really on whodunit but on Tony's conduct of the case, and his handling, or rather mishandling, of his relationships with his client and his wife. I'm afraid, though, that I found Tony rather irritating.

The cast includes Charles Laughton as the satyr-like judge, and Leo G. Carroll (whom I  remember rather fondly from The Man From UNCLE) as counsel for the prosecution. It's quite a good film, but for me, there was far too much soap-opera standard emoting, and not enough suspense. Not typical Hitchcock, by any means. I'm glad I've seen it, but give me North by North West, Rear Window or Vertigo any day..

Impact - movie review

I'm a fan of film noir, and some time ago, I treated myself to a box set of vintage films in that vein. But I have only got round to watching them now, and I decided to kick off my viewing with Impact, from 1949, a little-known movie with a screneplay co-written by Jay Dratler, who had previously worked on the script for that much more celebrated film, the excellent Laura.

Brian Donlevy plays Walter Williams, who is introduced to us as a dynamic young businessman,able to twist a board of grumpy directors around his little finger. But when he goes home to his wife Irene (Helen Williams) a different side to his character appears. He is a "softy", quite besotted with her. This being a film noir, however, you can bet that Irene, for all her protestations, is not equally crazy about him.

The early scenes are lacklustre in the extreme, but things liven up once Irene persuades doting Walter to give a lift to a young "cousin" who is, in fact, her lover,.Jim.  The plan is for Jim to drive Walter to a lonely spot on the edge of a cliff, kill him, and get away with murder. But Jim is not very bright, and things do not work out as he and Irene intended.

This is a decent piece of entertainment, and Walter finds himself trapped in a situation which just about validates the description of Impact as a film noir. Charles Coburn steals several scenes as a likeable cop. But the script is not as sharp as it could have been, and Walter's blind spot about Irene is rather hard to take. Worth watching, but a long way short of Laura . Then again, most films are.