wheels within wheels
by
Douglas Messerli
Whitfield
Cook and Ranald MacDougall (screenplay), Alma Reville and James Bridie (story
adaptation, based on Man Running by
Selwyn Jepson), Alfred Hitchcock (director) Stage Fright / 1950
Certainly Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950 film, Stage Fright, is not among his best. It has an absolutely preposterous plot and stars two actresses—Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich—who are so radically opposite in their acting styles and stage personae that they seem, at times, to be appearing in two different movies. Much of the story seems contrived in a very old-fashioned manner, and long sections, such as the one with the wonderful Joyce Grenfell announcing her “Lovely Ducks,” represent set-pieces more common in English beer halls than in a Hitchcock film.
Dumping off Cooper at her father’s house,
Eve rushes back to town, where she witnesses the discovery of murder victim by
the police, poses as a overwhelmed passerby to get information from the
detective investigating the case, Wilfred “Ordinary” Smith (Michael Wilding),
and pretends to be a journalist in order to bribe Inwood’s maid and dresser to
allow her to play the country cousin temporary replacement for those roles,
Doris Tinsdale. Before she knows it, she is falling in love with the detective
and beginning to perceive some rather contradictory information about Cooper,
all the while trying to keep her two lives separate and secret. Meanwhile, the
perfectly evil chanteuse, Dietrich, sings a hilariously sultry version of Cole
Porter’s "The Laziest Gal in Town", and struts the stage as if she
were in a English version of The Blue
Angel. And that’s all in the movie’s first half!
Obviously, it’s difficult keeping up two
vastly different lives simultaneously, particularly when you’re a shy good girl
like Eve. Hitchcock uses wonderful character actors such as Sims, Thorndike,
and the aforementioned Greenfell to keep the movie’s “wheels within wheels”
running smoothly. Hitchcock, himself, even shows up late in his film to
visually comment on Eve’s attempt to learn her lines for her role as the
country maid.
Cooper admits that he was the real
killer, but that he was made to do it by Inwood before he attempts to make a run
for it. Hitchcock saves the day in grand Grand Guignol fashion by dropping the
front stage’s iron curtain, presumably severing the murderer’s head. Eve goes
off hand in hand with “Ordinary” Smith, the piano-playing detective, to live
happily ever after.
Nobody is quite who he seems in this
film, as Hitchcock quite joyfully forces all to play so many different roles
that by the end of his film we’re not quite sure any longer who any of them
really are, a question the director will force us to ask the next year in one
of his greatest films, Strangers on a
Train, in 1954’s The Trouble with
Harry and 1958’s Vertigo, as well
as several others of his works.
Los Angeles,
August 18, 2017
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