directed by Alfred Hitchcock
screenplay by David O. Selznick
based on the novel by Robert Hichens (1933)
adapted by Alma Reville

125 min.

Traumatically boring. You always hear stories about bigshot producers (like David O. Selznick) throwing their weight around and bullying directors into changing storylines, casting different actors, etc. Always the idea in these stories is that some kind of thickheaded, cigar-chomping “I know what I likes” sensibility ends up getting dumped all over the helpless art. This movie was written by Selznick, so you could think of it as a sort of perfect realization of that producerial sensibility. It was certainly thickheaded. The funny thing is that Selznick’s idiotic screenplay has none of that good stuff that the cigar-chomping producers are supposed to like – sex, violence, spectacle, happy endings, etc. It was as though the challenge of simply making those things happen was too much for him. A great deal of the dialogue consists of people stating what we’ve just seen, like in a radio play, or discussing the plot situation as it stands. You could feel Selznick’s frustration as he tried to wrap his mind around what the hell people might do or say to each other, like the scene on Seinfeld when they sit down to write their sitcom screenplay and immediately agonize… until they have a breakthrough and decide to have the first character say “Hello” and the second character respond with “Hi.” Which is funny because not only is that worthless dialogue, it’s also bad dialogue. This movie was all like that; people saying needless things to each other and saying them awkwardly.

The photography was more stylish and intelligent than this material deserved, which is saying nothing, and which unfortunately redeemed the film not at all. I don’t know how it could have been redeemed, and it doesn’t seem like Hitchcock cared to try; looks like he just made the movie and got his paycheck. The idiocy of the script was so apparent to us that I have to assume he was well aware of what he had on his hands, but who knows.

This was off the on-demand movie service. It is interesting to note, we observed, that the plot of Jagged Edge, the last on-demand movie we watched, is essentially identical. I’d say that Joe Eszterhas had intentionally borrowed it except why on earth would he have done that? The point is: we picked the same stupid movie twice!

This movie includes a scene where Charles Laughton, as a leering, flabby old judge, fixes on the bared shoulder of his friend’s wife and begins making a creepy, drunken pass at her, sitting next to her and taking her hand. I was forcibly reminded of this. Isn’t Charles Laughton perfect casting? But his dialogue wasn’t as good.