Stage Fright

****

The Master's film returns to London. It is important to know, though, that the opening being told to beginning understudy, Eve Gill (Jane Wyman) is from a murder suspect on the lam. In a glamorous co-starring role, Marlene Dietrich is presented by the murder suspect as a theater actress, Mrs. Inwood, who supposedly sets up her actor lover, Robinson (Richard Todd, playing a potentially manipulated patsy), for the murder of her husband (a murder she maybe committed). He is motivated by Inwood to go to her home to retrieve a new dress (her old dress has a stain of her husband's blood), messing up the nearby study to make it all look like a robbery. Soon a maid for Inwood, Nellie Goode (Kay Walsh, turning out to be a deliciously wretched blackmailer), arrives, noticing (from a distance) Robinson in the study, but he flees without her getting a good enough look. Soon he's on the run, deciding to explain his situation to Eve, interrupting her while training on stage with students and her acting professor. She is in love with him and agrees to listen to his story, eventually taking him to hide at her father's getaway cottage out of London. Meanwhile, Eve decides to pay Nellie to take her place temporarily so she can hope to learn of something that will help Robinson.

When she meets a detective inspector, "Ordinary" Smith (Michael Wilding; her nickname for him that he soon rather takes a shine to (along with her), in a pub while trying to figure out how to help Robinson, her life will never be the same. As a maid, Eve becomes more of a highly regarded assistant to Inwood, helping her during her performances, with wardrobe and just seeing after her. What Eve doesn't expect is to fall in love with Smith (and vice versa) instead as she works as her own disguising detective, placing herself at risk. Aiding and abetting a fugitive doesn't help matters, neither does placing herself in the possible crosshairs of a murderer.

The ending soon throws the viewer for a loop, turning the usual "the wrong man" formula on its head (which I thought was kind of neat, because we just assumed what was being told to Eve at the beginning was the truth). Hitchcock made some films like Stage Fright which obviously suffer from the fact he made so many classics before and after them. Any other director would consider Stage Fright a grand achievement. Truth is after this film he made Strangers on a Train, and just a few years prior to it he made Notorious and Spellbound. Stage Fright is a wonderful showcase for Wyman, who had not long before it won the Oscar for Johnny Belinda. She's sweet and very soft-spoken. Driven, for sure, and trustworthy, loyal to a fault; Wyman's Eve is exactly the kind of heroine Hitchcock can utilize for a film regarding a young woman who must assume an identity to help a friend in need, all the while, juggling a blossoming romance with one man while falling out of love with another.

Then you have an absolutely marvelous Alistair Sim (right before he would forever be aligned to the character of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol) as Wyman's father, allowing himself to assist Wyman in her quest to salvage Robinson's name, and his contribution at a "Garden Party" festival (during a rainy day where tents are up to help the arts, specifically performance and stage) through the use of a doll, attained by intimidating a little man (after being intimidated himself by someone bigger than him) after he successfully hit a duck with a rifle shot in a rally game is especially memorable. But, Sim has so many good scenes and has such a grasp of his character (the kind of wise, clever, witty, quick-thinking sort that steals scenes in films easily) that this is just one moment of many he has in the film. Sim's casting is just one of many good choices: Wilding as a smitten detective has a swell scene with Wyman in a taxi as he makes no bones about how he feels for her while she gives in to her burgeoning feelings for him, while Todd is fantastic at the end where the "real Robbie" emerges in an extremely well lit conclusion involving him in a theatre on stage. The lighting of faces is exceptional.

As is usual with the Master's repertoire, the camera elaborates when no dialogue is spoken, often instead talking volumes (how Sim sees the blood stain as Hitch's camera points out how to "call Dietrich out" for her involvement in the murder while performing on stage in a tent; hands of Todd and Wyman when he contemplates hurting her and how light is spotted right on Wyman's eyes, deeply hurt while Todd's are maddening), while the performances are still key to telling the story.

The thing about Hitchcock movies is that everything matters. The sets, how the camera moves, the way the actors/actresses are positioned in shots, and how the dialogues and scenarios play out all add to the Hitchcock experience that I live for. Maltin says this wasn't a success, but I disagree. I think it is a gem worth devoting time to. I don't think disappointment will follow.

This might not be a "Dietrich movie" but that doesn't mean she doesn't command when she appears. This is Wyman's film, but I have to say that when she is on screen with Dietrich, it's clear why the latter was so admired and revered. I'm not a fan of her musical numbers, though. Never have been, but Hitchcock knew how to make hers in the tent totally rock it. The little doll brought to her by the kid thanks to Sim and Wilding seeing her reaction to it. Then Eve being called on by Inwood to help her with Smith realizing she's in deep. Good stuff.

Sybil Thorndyke, as Sim's wife and Wyman's mother, is a hoot, always attentive to her guests while finding her husband rather contemptible (while obviously still in love with him; his "walking on egg shells" around her is cute). How she is an "accidental nuisance" regarding Robinson is quite amusing. Again casting in Hitchcock films are often littered with cherished performances.