Sunday, 1 December 2024

Stage Fright (1950 Alfred Hitchcock)

I can't quite accept that Jane Wyman is Alastair Sim's daughter. (Come to that I can't accept that she's Sybil Thorndike's daughter either. She was married in real life to Ronald Reagan, which I can't quite believe either. Is the problem that I just don't believe Jane Wyman?)

Has as funny and sudden an ending - has a suddenly funny ending - as that of Vertigo.

With Marlene Dietrich, Richard Todd, Michael Wilding, Kay Walsh, Miles Malleson, Joyce Grenfell, Patricia Hitchcock. Alma adapted Selwyn Jepson's novel and Whitfield Cook is credited for the screenplay. Alma and Cook were both dead against the 'lying flashback' - but if you look at it now, it's quite acceptable - Hitch ahead of the game again. Wilkie Cooper is on camera.

Patrick McGilligan surprisingly neglects to mention how the film went down other than to say it was 'economical and surprisingly profitable'.

What's going on here?

The scene behind Dietrich is back projected. The most obvious answer is they needed to engineer a scene they didn't have from shooting. But is something more mysterious going on? Is Hitch saying 'This is faked'? Because it wouldn't surprise me.

What's the art? I couldn't track it down.

Yeah, bored trying to find that now. When I image searched it, lots of weird and wonderful things came up, including Dali's paintings for Spellbound!


Hitch was disappointed with both Wyman and Todd.

And Sim annoyed Hitch by constantly hamming it up.

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