Stage Fright [DVD]

I have always loved this film and have grown to like it more. This is one of the Hitchcock films that i watch over and over.First i want to let it be known that i may have a slight bias because i am a big Marlene Dietrich fan.Stage Fright is one of those films that has legends attached to it due to the types of personalities involved. Detrich's scenes were basically a collaboration. It is documented that she took complete control of her scenes to the extent pretty much directing them--which would make sense and adds to her classic legendary status as a true star. My main fascination is this film mixes mainly 2 different styles of film. The British Hitchcock films mixed with the American. The end result is a more British feel with an odd American fusion that works like no other Hitch film. It has an odd almost absurd feel to it with some of the main obvious examples being: 1. The animated superb cinematography with the over the top performances by Dietrich and Jonathan Cooper. 2.The offbeat non cinematic character played by Jane Wyman--what i mean by non cinematic is she has this odd minimalist reserved/confused/pensive thing going on that is truly original. Wymans visual impact with her different disguises makes her performance more like a silent film style.There are really far out moments when Coopers characters face becomes more ans more distorted and crazed bordering on scary. There is this really bizarre scene where Dietrich looks like she is doing a close up scene over a blue screen background(or whatever they used in the early 50's).There is a great soundtrack unfortunately not composed by Herman but still almost as good. The musical score has a Big Sleep feel to it.This film is definitely a noir picture that did something a lot of 1950's mainstream noirs wanted to do but could not. This was make a less dark noir with a more accessible plot that would appeal to a larger audience. Even though reviews at the time were mixed i think Hitch again was at the top of the game and made a picture that is still not understood fully.Back to the difference between Hitched British period and his American would be the dialogue is faster and usually more consistently funny.If you take his masterpiece Frenzy for example, he went back and made a 100% British style film.In Stage Fright there are American actors but the cinematography and camerawork seems American as well. The dialogue and the time spent on certain plot developments make this a meld of the 2 styles like none other in Hitch's catalog. There is really witty lines and an almost inner mockery of the conclusion involving blood stained dolls.The ending is classic Hitch and i was surprised by the satisfying and to me, unpredictable ending.This is a must own for Hitchcock fans. I also love the packaging of the regular dvd. The design on the disk is cool. The case it one of those rare solid ones.

I am satisfied with Stage Fright on blu-ray. There are not any lines, black or white spots going in our out. The faces and images on the screen are not blurry. The work done on this film to make it look better is great.

Let's deal with the dislike first of all. This is a kind of whodunnit with an almost farcical narrative. I'm really surprised at this being Hitchcock. The thrills are kept down by the near-farce.On the upside though, all the principal performances were superb and, almost unbelievably, Jane Wyman steals the limelight from Marlene Dietrich. Wyman's was the bigger role, but by 1949, Dietrich's screen magnetism was polished to the highest degree. I bought the DVD as part of a Dietrich marathon, but I shall now investigate some of Wyman's other work.But all of the others - Sim, Wilding, Todd and some of the relatively minor players, such as Thorndike, Walsh and Grenfell - turn in unimpeachable performances as well.One other minor dislike was the excessive use of letterbox lighting on the eyes of the principals. It works well with Dietrich early on, but it is overused in the climactic scene between Wyman and Todd.There are many more thrilling Hitchcock films available, but I shall return to this one simply because of the quality of the acting.WARNING! There is a 20 minute documentary included as a bonus feature. This is a major plot spoiler, so do not watch it before watching the film for the first time. I started to do so, but switched out after 2 minutes when the plot spoiling became apparent. It is well worth watching after viewing the film, though.

One of the least respected of Hitchcock's 1950s oeuvre is the first of the line of special films in the decade.STAGE FRIGHT has so many elements that appear in so many of Hitchcock's films that one realizes he was an experimenter who tried like an alchemist to put together the best elements. They only mixed on occasion. In a dozen films you can find the same motifs.Here are staircases up and down to treachery, a dangerous blonde, a violent serial killer, dual identities, and on and on. There is a sea of umbrellas in a rainstorm, as in Foreign Correspondent.Jane Wyman, fresh off her Oscar, was a concession to studio and box-office. She is sorely miscast as a British actress, daughter of Alistair Sim and Dame Sybil Thorndike. It alone is so preposterous that Wyman actually carries it off. In TO CATCH A THIEF, Hitch has Cary Grant joking to John Williams about Americans playing British roles in a movie.The leading men in STAGE FRIGHT were hardly strong actors: Michael Wilding as a soft-spoken, easily duped, but cagily watchful detective, and Richard Todd as the slick chorus boy associate of the diva of divas.Marlene Dietrich gives another tailored performance as a great actress--and she makes little Eve Gill a pale copy of Eve Harrington. Dietrich is Bette Davis on steroids--and if you want to know where Madonna stole all her best ideas, you need only look at the musical numbers Hitch filmed with Dietrich.Hitchcock was diabolical--and so few saw what he did in this movie. He took Jane Wyman in a staged scene accepting her Photoplay golden award for Johnny Belinda, her Oscar film of the previous year. It was the opening scene of ALL ABOUT EVE.Then he cast Wyman as a fake assistant to the star, Dietrich, named--yes, indeed--Eve!Wyman's amateur detective fools the detective as much as Kim Novak fooled Jimmy Stewart's detective in VERTIGO in years ahead.Echo of film after film permeates this curio. Todd's penthouse view has shades that are similar to those of the killers in ROPE. Yet, the storyline taxes every sense of logic.Eve Gill's parents include a dotty mother and a co-conspiratorial father. It seems like the Hitchcock nuclear family. Indeed, Hitch's wife Alma Reville adapted the novel for this film script--and daughter Patricia appeared in a small role.It explains why the film was made: it's a trifle, a family affair, and a jumping off point for a decade of truly extraordinary movies.Be sure to read ALFRED HITCHCOCK FRESHLY SHOWERED for reviews and insights into all of Hitchcock's movies. Now available as an ebook or in softcover on Amazon.

This 1950 'British film’ by director Alfred Hitchcock is perhaps one of the man’s more overlooked works, but the film still has more than enough positives to raise Stage Fright well above mere run-of-the-mill fare. One reason cited for the film’s relatively middling reputation is that Hitch followed it the following year with an undisputed (well, by me, at least!) masterpiece, in Strangers On A Train, but rather here we get the film-maker harking back in many ways to his earlier 'British classics’ like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, with another man on the run and much comedic British banter (courtesy of the film’s London setting and impressive character cast), plus an undeniable touch of Hollywood glamour from stars Jane Wyman and, particularly, Marlene Dietrich. The film’s theatrical setting, as Wyman’s budding actress, Eve Gill, attempts to save Richard Todd’s 'innocent’, Jonathan Cooper, from his murderous obsession with Dietrich’s femme fatale and actress/singer, Charlotte Inwood, is another nice touch, allowing for an element of a 'drama within a drama’ and numerous plays on the thespian theme.The film is also famous, some might say infamous, for its use of a 'false flashback’, indeed Hitch himself regarded this (retrospectively, at least) as a flaw. The critics’ jury is (seemingly) still out on this aspect, but I do not consider this in the least a flaw, but merely the source of another plot twist (and quite an effective one at that). Depending on personal preference, the film does suffer somewhat from a lack of memorable Hitchcock set-pieces and true (or, certainly, chilling) suspense, until its final 10 minutes at least, but much entertainment is had along the way (largely in the tradition of the man’s earlier British films). Cast-wise, even though the US/British mix does not gel entirely, the film has some great turns. Both Dietrich and Wyman impress, the former’s sultry appeal is captured brilliantly by Hitch (and cinematographer Wilkie Cooper) – particularly during Charlotte’s rendition of the Cole Porter song, The Laziest Gal In Town – whilst Wyman does some impressive, particularly comedic, work as Charlotte’s stand-in ‘cockney’ maid, Doris, in an attempt to uncover the singer’s role in the film’s pivotal murder. Elsewhere, two great British stalwarts excel as Eve’s separated parents, namely Alastair Sim and Sybil Thorndike (the latter in a typically Hitchcockian mother depiction à la Mrs Antony in Strangers On A Train, Mrs Thornhill in North By Northwest, and many others). Also look out for nice cameos from Joyce Grenfell, Miles Malleson, (a young) Alfie Bass, Ballard Berkeley (the Major from Fawlty Towers), plus Kay Walsh’s great turn as Charlotte’s busybody maid, Nellie.Visually, the film does not reach the heights of Hitch’s later American classics, but there are still some trademark highlights. We get a number of PoV sequences plus an inventive tracking shot of Cooper entering a house and closing an invisible door behind him! The film’s opening credits sequence as a theatre safety curtain rises to reveal London in all its (admittedly post-WW2 bombed-out) glory, the use of a young boy to present Charlotte with 'blood-stained evidence’ and the film’s theatre-set finale (particularly the use of shadow on Gill and Cooper’s faces) are all highly memorable (the latter calling to my mind the setting of Fry in Radio City Music Hall in Saboteur).As a big Hitch fan, Stage Fright is a film that was off my radar for a long time, but now discovered, I would recommend as an intriguing and solid entry in the film-maker’s 'second-tier’ films.

From The 39 Steps in 1935 to Notorious and Rope in the late '40s, Hitchcock had already made many fine films, and had been in Hollywood a decade or so by the time he made this less than coherent murder mystery in 1950. The cast is generally good, with excellent performances by Alistair Sim as the heroine's rogueish, mildly eccentric father, Dame Sybil Thorndyke, no less, as her doughty mother, and the inimitable, classy Marlene Dietrich as a vampish actress. Kay Walsh is perhaps the best of all as a waspish, blackmailing cockney maid.The female lead is ostensibly Jane Wyman, as the 'nice' girlfriend of RIchard Todd, the latter surprisingly compelling as a man with secrets, some of which we hear about and see in a now infamous flashback sequence which opens the film. I've always found Todd rather colourless, but he is very good here. Wyman is better than the critics have made out, but she wasn't happy making it, and it does show at times.Michael Wilding, a big British star back then, plays what must be the most languidly amused, blatantly sensuous detective in film, a man who gives every impression of making detection almost a hobby, while courting Wyman's conflicted heroine. Wilding himself was a strangely louche actor with a disconcertingly pouting lower lip. {He and Dietrich had an affair during and after filming, then he married someone called Elizabeth Taylor.}Apparently, Hitch himself lost interest in what is, to be honest, a bit of a mess of a film, and Dietrich {who knew a lot about lighting, settings and direction} virtually directed some scenes. The movie barely hangs together, and seems oddly like a 'rehearsal for a film' rather than a finished film. The plot drags at times, and some of the scenes make little sense.However, all is not lost, and if you're a fan of either Hitch or Dietrich {count me in} you'll want to see this. Marlene is her usual utterly professional self, giving a credible performance, though I have to say it's nowhere near her best ~ and she was The Best!Oh yes . . . just when you think things can't get any dafter, Joyce Grenfell crops up for a five-minute cameo in a funfair as a cheerfully clumsy, toothy shoot-the-duck lady. Understated she isn't.Marlene gets to sing two songs, including a tepid version {with a frankly awful close-harmony male chorus} of The Laziest Gal in Town, which would later be a far from tepid staple of her live shows.This is minor Hitchcock, fairly minor Dietrich, and a film worth seeing once ~ and maybe again years later if only for its eclectic, once in a lifetime cast.

A man is suspected of killing his lover's husband and goes on the run while his friend is determined to prove his innocence by going undercover to work for his lover who she suspects of being the actual killer. Not quite up there with the best of Hitchcock but still good fun and feeling more of a comedy in places. Very good performances from Jane Wyling in the lead role, Richard Todd as another Hitchcock character wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit, Marlene Deitrich as the femme fetale character and Alistair Sim. There's also an appearance from one of Alfred Hitchcock's daughters in this too and it does still leave you guessing until the end.

The 2022 Warner Archive blu ray release of Stage Fright is the first time (so far as I know) that this film has been made available with a good quality transfer. The previous DVD was littered with defects in the picture. The sound quality is ok - not such a big improvement on previous issues.The film itself is good, and eminently watchable. The themes of artifice and pretence are at its heart. It is a shame Stage Fright is considered a ‘lesser’ Hitchcock, not least as a result of his own concerns about the use of a device, the lying flashback, that isn’t particularly controversial today. This is no Vertigo or Strangers on a Train, but it’s a really good film, and anyone who likes Hitchcock (or indeed Alastair Sim!) should enjoy it.

Remarcable acting by the key actors