burying
the dead
by Douglas Messerli
John Michael Hayes (writer), based on a
novel by Jack Trevor, Alfred Hitchcock (director) The Trouble with Harry / 1955
Soon after filming To Catch a Thief in the beautiful
Riviera landscape, Hitchcock and company were summoned to Vermont, location
experts claiming that the leaves were in their full fall color. The world
presented in the 1955 film, The Trouble
with Harry, could not be more different from that of the wealthy citizens
of Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes of the former movie. If guilt—guilt both for
having great wealth and guilt for stealing it from others—is a major theme of To Catch a Thief, the prelapsarian world
of upstate Vermont is one in which none of the small town citizens seemingly
has any money—and no reason, accordingly, for guilt.
Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), a retired
captain, lives, as he puts it, in a man’s world without any woman’s homey
touches; his hunger for food, indeed, begins the series of events at the center
of the story. Mrs. Wiggs (Mildred
Dunnock) runs the local general store without even a cash register, with many
of her customers, such as artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), unable to pay
her; in an attempt to raise money for him and herself, she exhibits his
paintings alongside the vegetables and cider she sells to the few tourists
passing through town. Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine) gets by, supporting
herself and her young son the best she can, on her dead first husband’s
insurance money.

We soon realize that for all but one of
the town’s citizens, the lack of money presents no real difficulties, as they
barter for goods and services—Sam promising his paintings as credit for his
groceries, the young Arnie trading a dead rabbit for a frog and two blueberry
muffins—and are seemingly ready to exchange whatever little they have with one
another. Only Calvin Wiggs—whose very name suggests the religious roots of
American financial “accomplishment”—is in search of money, working as a
policeman by the “piece” and attempting to sell remodeled antique cars. Calvin
has what Sam describes as a misunderstanding of art—not just of visual art, but
a miscomprehension of the art of living.
Even more remarkably, the citizens of this
idyllic village seem to be the most placidly content folk on the face of the
earth. The fact that the Captain has accidentally shot and killed a man in his
hunt for a rabbit is met with utter complacency by the near army of people who
pass by the body lying in the woods. As the Captain vaguely contemplates how to
cover up his “crime,” Miss Gravely greets him with friendly hauteur: “What
seems to be the trouble, Captain?” After
explaining the situation to her, she acceptingly replies, “If I were going to
hide an accident, I shouldn’t delay.” Indeed, not only is her demeanor
imperturbable, but she uses the opportunity of encountering the “murderer” to
invite him for blueberry muffins and coffee, with, perhaps, some elderberry wine.
Arnie, the child who has originally
discovered the fallen man, returns with his mother in tow. Jennifer Rogers not
only complacently accepts the reality of the man’s death, but seems absolutely
elated by it; it is an act of “providence,” she declares; the world has seen
the last of Harry (we later discover he was her second husband, brother to her
first) as he lies in “a deep wonderful
sleep.” When the child asks if he will get better, she replies, “Not if we’re
lucky.”
The local doctor, Greenbow, wandering the
fields while reading Shakespeare’s love sonnets, trips over the body, his
near-sightedness allowing him to not even recognize it as a dead man. A local
tramp is delighted by the discovery of the corpse which provides him with a new
pair of shoes.
As the captain notes, “Couldn’t have had
more people here if I’d sold tickets.” And, later, as the final witness to his supposed
crime, Sam Marlowe, is seen approaching, he quips, “Next thing you know they’ll
be televising the whole thing.” Sam, like the others, unruffled by the sight of
a dead man, simply takes out his drawing pad and charcoal to begin a sketch.
This general imperturbability of the film’s
characters—the source also of much of the picture’s dark humor—has been
misunderstood by many otherwise perceptive film critics such as Time Out’s Geoff Andrew, as representing
“British restraint” and a “discreet style” that makes for “wooden” performances
and “coy and awkward” situations.
As
the excellent film critic Lesley Brill has argued, however, the people of
Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry
are so in touch with nature that death and resurrection is seen as absolutely
natural: “Death passes and life renews without effort or anxiety. The bland
tone of The Trouble with Harry
constitutes more than comic technique; it results from a profound confidence
that death lacks the power to destroy and that hope can scarcely help but
prosper.”
In a series of absurd events, Jennifer
Rogers has hit Harry over the head with a milk bottle, in response to which the
stunned man, stumbling about the woods and determined to find his wife to
restore his sexual rights, encounters Miss Gravely, whom he attacks, she
driving the heel of her shoe into his head; meanwhile, the Captain, in search
of prey, shoots three times. The three major suspects in Harry’s “murder,”
accordingly, are each forced to lackadaisically address his or her connection
to the corpse, to recount their “trouble” with Harry.
With Sam’s help, the Captain attempts to
hide the evidence of his crime; but when he discerns that he is innocent
(recalling that his first shot hit a beer can, the second a sign, and the third
Arnie’s rabbit), he is insistent upon disinterring Harry. His reward, in turn,
for that burial and resurrection comes in the form of the restored Miss Gravely
and their budding relationship.
Miss Gravely’s belief that she has killed
him results in the Captain and her returning to bury the body once more. Upon
further reflection, however, and with the recognition that in hiding her
evidence she may lead the police to find her guilty, she also demands Harry’s
resurrection, which is rewarded, perhaps, by the sale of Sam’s paintings to a
millionaire. In this non-capitalistic world of barter, however, Sam accepts
payment by granting the desires of his friends: a box of monthly strawberries
to Jennifer, a smelly chemistry set for Arnie, a chromium-plated cash register
for Wiggy, a gun and hunting outfit for the Captain, a hope chest “filled with
hope” for Miss Gravely, and a double bed for himself and Jennifer, his
soon-to-be wife.
Later, when the group considers the fact
that the somewhat seamy details of Jennifer’s marriage to Harry may come out
with the discovery of the body, she is faced with the decision that leads to
Harry’s third burial. But again new doubts arise as this small society
recognizes that Jennifer will be unable to marry Sam without the evidence of
her second husband’s death, and the grave diggers, appearing in the film like
the “dance of death” figures of Bergman’s The
Seventh Seal (a film released two years later), unbury the corpse one last
time. After depositing the body in Jennifer’s bathtub, they discover, upon the
doctor’s investigation, that the cause of death was a natural one: Harry simply
had a bad heart.

Freed now from any of the negative
responses from the world outside their own, and having nothing to hide (Brill
points out the comic use throughout The
Trouble with Harry of a door that repeatedly opens to reveal only an empty
closet), these fortunate few have successfully restored their world to the way
“things happen(ed),” revealing the course of nature. As Sam has argued early in
the film, Harry’s death is perhaps an “act of God,” “Heaven’s will…done.” Now filled with love for one another, the
four await the new day that is tomorrow, the yesterday that is today. As the
film’s end announces, “The trouble with Harry is over.”
Los Angeles, January 7, 2003
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