Stage Fright - 1950 film review

Stage Fright is one of Alfred Hitchcock's less well-known films. I watched (and reviewed) it eleven years ago, but perhaps significantly, I found when I looked at it again that I'd forgotten all about it. The script is based on Man Running, a novel by the British writer Selwyn Jepson, whose father Edgar was himself a writer of some note whose output included a number of crime books and who was an early member of the Detection Club. I haven't read the source book, though I gather that Hitch made drastic changes to the storyline, as was his wont.

The first thing to say about the film is that the cast is impressive. Marlene Dietrich plays Charlotte Inwood, an actress whose husband is murdered. Richard Todd plays Jonathan Cooper, her lover. There are also parts for Sybil Thorndike, Miles Malleson, Andre Morell, and Ballard Berkeley (now remembered fondly as the Major in Fawlty Towers). At the start of the film, Cooper tells his friend, an aspiring actress called Eve Gill (Jane Wyman, whose five marriages included one to Ronald Reagan) about the way that Charlotte's behaviour led to his being suspected of the murder, which she committed. We see his version of events in a lengthy flashback.

After Jonathan flees from the police and takes refuge with Eve and her father (Alastair Sim), Eve starts to play detective. This brings her into contact with a likeable cop called Smith (Michael Wilding), who is hunting for Cooper. Although Eve is devoted to Cooper, she finds herself increasingly attracted to Cooper, while using her acting skills to inveigle her way into Charlotte's household.

This is an entertaining film, as you'd expect from Hitchcock, but it's also flawed. The decision to cast Wyman, who makes no discernible attempt to conceal her American accent, as the daughter of Alastair Sim, strikes me as bizarre. It may have made crude commercial sense, but artistically it was foolish. More serious, though, is the way the audience are deceived about what has happened - the antithesis of fair play. Years later, when interviewed by Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock admitted that in misleading us as to what has happened, he'd got it badly wrong. I agree. So while Stage Fright is perfectly watchable, it's also somewhat disappointing.

The Witness for the Prosecution - BBC TV review

The Witness for the Prosecution, part one of which aired on the BBC tonight, was always going to be one of the main events on this year's Christmas TV schedule. Agatha Christie's short story (originally written very early in her career, more than 90 years ago) was later turned into a play. In 1957, it was famously filmed by Billy Wilder.

Wilder's version boasted a crisp script and a terrific cast, including Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Charles Laughton. It is my favourite movie based on a Christie story. and set a very high standard for any subsequent adaptation. The BBC commissioned Sarah Phelps to write the new screenplay, a sound decision bearing in mind her good work last year with the script for And Then There Were None.

Less obvious was the decision to turn the story into a two hour-long episodes. That choice meant that Phelps was required to add quite a lot of backstory material - rather more than was needed last year. To update a Christie to this extent is always a risky enterprise, and Phelps' solution to the challenge is, in part, to focus on period atmosphere. In the first episode, this worked fairly well, but (pending seeing episode two) I'm inclined to think that a single 90-minute drama might have had more focus, and therefore greater intensity. There's a lot of darkness in this version, but that's not quite the same as intensity.

The BBC cast, if not quite in the league of Dietrich and company, is pretty good, with Toby Jones impressive as usual, playing the part of a down-at-heel solicitor. Naturally I empathised with him, just as Harry Devlin would. Billy Howie takes the role of Leonard Vole, while Andrea Riseborough is Romaine, and Kim Cattrall the older woman who takes up with a toy boy before meeting an untimely end. This version of a classic crime story has not yet displaced Wilder's film in my affections, and probably won't do so, but I will certainly be watching to see how Phelps handles the rest of the story.

Stage Fright

Stage Fright is a Hitchcock film of 1950, boasting a mixed and noteworthy bag of ingredients. A young man who has become embroiled in the murder of his actress lover’s husband flees from the police and seeks help from a much more dependable woman, Eve Gill. It’s a neat and suspenseful situation which results in a watchable movie. There are, however, two flaws. First, the story sags in the middle – a shortage of meaningful plot, I felt, although the ending is strong. Second, the flashback which opens the film turns out to be a bit of a cheat.

The cast is impressive, and makes the very best of the material. Marlene Dietrich is suitably sultry and malevolent as the scheming actress, and sings a Cole Porter song during that rather laboured middle section of the film. Richard Todd, a heartthrob in his day, is her neurotic and unreliable stooge. Eve Gill is played by Jane Wyman, whose greatest claim to fame is that she was President Reagan’s first wife. He was her third husband. Jane, a pretty woman, was obviously quite a character; she later married yet again, divorcing only to re-marry the chap before divorcing again, finally abandoning marriage, no doubt exhausted, and turning to religion.

Eve’s father was played by Alastair Sim, and there were minor parts for Miles Malleson, omnipresent in films of that period, and Ballard Berkeley, who is now remembered by many as the Major in ‘Fawlty Towers’.

The story comes from a novel called Man Running, one of six books featuring Eve Gill and written by Selwyn Jepson. His reputation has not survived the passage of time too well, but he was prolific as a novelist and screenwriter, and came from a literary family. His father, Edgar Jepson, was an early member of the Detection Club, and co-author of a legendary detective story, ‘The Tea Leaf’. And Selwyn’s niece is the notable author Fay Weldon.