Alfred Hitchcock was into the ten-year sag between "Rope" and "Vertigo" when he filmed a novel that reviewers had said would make suitable material for him. It feels more like an opened-out West End hit play, full of what the Master derided, in others' work, as 'photographs of people talking'. It lacks the pyrotechnical set pieces of his later chefs d'oeuvre, and is flat and commonplace in expository stretches of whodunnitry. Also, there is one narrative cheat which everyone knows by now but is no more pardonable for that, unless you think the whole shebang is too contrived for it to be marred thereby.
Interest is maintained, just about, by a procession of oddball, mainly British, character players. They circle around the insipid central character of Jane Wyma's drama student, sleuthing after the real killer of Marlene's husband. Barely straying from a back-projected London with hints of the full-blown gorblimey anachronisms of 'Frenzy'-- Hitch was already remembering his native city more than reliving it-- the story unwinds leisurely. There are amusing but irrelevant pauses for Marlene's self-parodic 'Laziest Girl in Town' sashaying, and a jolly scene with the old firm, Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell ('You are sorry for the orphans, aren't you?') at a shooting range during a wet theatrical charity event; Hitch pastiches himself with a shot of umbrellas filling the screen as it rains, like 'Foreign Correspondent'.
Ms Wyman had won an Oscar by proving she could Really Act as a raped deaf-mute in 'Johnny Belinda'. Understandably she wanted something lighter. So did Hitch after the nerve-wracking long takes and melodrama of 'Under Capricorn', which had lost a packet and ended his partnership with the Bernstein brothers of Granada. Jane's 'tewwibly Briddish' accent is not up to Paltrow's or Zellweger's, and she was not enough of a plain-Jane in clothes and makeup to satisfy her director-- at the garden party she's in full New Look. But her nervy, big-eyed, oddly simian prettiness gets her through the part of a drama student who infiltrates Marlene's dressing room: 'Doris' was 15 years younger than the soon-to-be-ex Mrs Ronald Reagan was in real life.
There are other perversities in casting. Michael Wilding has to subdue his roguish Regency-buck charm as a plainclothes copper embarrassed by his Christian name; conversely, the stiff and sanctimonious Richard Todd (who had jerked tears co-starring with Jane's husband in 'The Hasty Heart') had to portray a charismatic possible killer. Hitch, Todd says, was pleased with the result, but the man himself later said 'the villain was a flop' and shot a lot of close-ups of his eyes, maybe because Todd's mouth and body are not the most expressive.
The overall mood is frivolous and relaxed, but Hitch was not at his happiest in light, as opposed to black, comedy: 'Mr and Mrs Smith' for Selznick, with no crime or solution, had not been his best time in Hollywood, and the surname of Wilding's character might be considered ominous. As 'Waltzes from Vienna' showed, Hitch was not at home with song and dance numbers either. The backstage life of the posh theatre where Marlene performs has none of the atmosphere of the music hall in 'The 39 Steps'.
With glimpses of Sybil Thorndike (as Wyman's heedlessly talkative mother) and Sim as her dad, both too old, plus Miles Malleson and with Kay Walsh moving into character roles, 'Stage Fright' cannot fail to be lively at times. But Marlene would be better served in the 1950s by two other major helmers who cast her against type in small but vivid appearances, in 'Witness for the Prosecution' and 'Touch of Evil'.
Hitchcock did not work with these talents again and preferred, rightly, to write this one off. As Fritz Lang said of 'An American Guerilla in the Philippines', a director must eat. No doubt some film studies thesis is at this moment poised to discover a masterpiece in these faded reels... but no, not really.
Interest is maintained, just about, by a procession of oddball, mainly British, character players. They circle around the insipid central character of Jane Wyma's drama student, sleuthing after the real killer of Marlene's husband. Barely straying from a back-projected London with hints of the full-blown gorblimey anachronisms of 'Frenzy'-- Hitch was already remembering his native city more than reliving it-- the story unwinds leisurely. There are amusing but irrelevant pauses for Marlene's self-parodic 'Laziest Girl in Town' sashaying, and a jolly scene with the old firm, Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell ('You are sorry for the orphans, aren't you?') at a shooting range during a wet theatrical charity event; Hitch pastiches himself with a shot of umbrellas filling the screen as it rains, like 'Foreign Correspondent'.
Ms Wyman had won an Oscar by proving she could Really Act as a raped deaf-mute in 'Johnny Belinda'. Understandably she wanted something lighter. So did Hitch after the nerve-wracking long takes and melodrama of 'Under Capricorn', which had lost a packet and ended his partnership with the Bernstein brothers of Granada. Jane's 'tewwibly Briddish' accent is not up to Paltrow's or Zellweger's, and she was not enough of a plain-Jane in clothes and makeup to satisfy her director-- at the garden party she's in full New Look. But her nervy, big-eyed, oddly simian prettiness gets her through the part of a drama student who infiltrates Marlene's dressing room: 'Doris' was 15 years younger than the soon-to-be-ex Mrs Ronald Reagan was in real life.
There are other perversities in casting. Michael Wilding has to subdue his roguish Regency-buck charm as a plainclothes copper embarrassed by his Christian name; conversely, the stiff and sanctimonious Richard Todd (who had jerked tears co-starring with Jane's husband in 'The Hasty Heart') had to portray a charismatic possible killer. Hitch, Todd says, was pleased with the result, but the man himself later said 'the villain was a flop' and shot a lot of close-ups of his eyes, maybe because Todd's mouth and body are not the most expressive.
The overall mood is frivolous and relaxed, but Hitch was not at his happiest in light, as opposed to black, comedy: 'Mr and Mrs Smith' for Selznick, with no crime or solution, had not been his best time in Hollywood, and the surname of Wilding's character might be considered ominous. As 'Waltzes from Vienna' showed, Hitch was not at home with song and dance numbers either. The backstage life of the posh theatre where Marlene performs has none of the atmosphere of the music hall in 'The 39 Steps'.
With glimpses of Sybil Thorndike (as Wyman's heedlessly talkative mother) and Sim as her dad, both too old, plus Miles Malleson and with Kay Walsh moving into character roles, 'Stage Fright' cannot fail to be lively at times. But Marlene would be better served in the 1950s by two other major helmers who cast her against type in small but vivid appearances, in 'Witness for the Prosecution' and 'Touch of Evil'.
Hitchcock did not work with these talents again and preferred, rightly, to write this one off. As Fritz Lang said of 'An American Guerilla in the Philippines', a director must eat. No doubt some film studies thesis is at this moment poised to discover a masterpiece in these faded reels... but no, not really.