El tercer tiro

The Trouble With Harry is a comedy film about a dead body. Alfred Hitchcock makes the macabre concept deliciously funny and entertaining in his unique style. Helping Hitchcock to turn this unlikeliest of premises into an enjoyable film are Bernard Herrmann (providing fabulous music scoring), and a cast of winning actors who judge to perfection how far to push their tongues into their cheeks.

A dead body turns up on a patch of grass near the top of a wooded New England hill. Various people have reason to believe that they're responsible for the man's death. Septugenarian ex-sea captain Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) is worried that he might have accidentally shot the man while hunting for rabbits. Old spinster Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick) fears that when she whacked the man over the head with her shoe, she may have done more damage than she intended. And single mother Jennifer (Shirley MacLaine) has even greater cause to feel responsible, for she is the dead man's wife. During an argument, she smashed a bottle over his head and is now almost sure that he died as a result. Local artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) decides to help his neighbours to cover up the crime, but after burying and digging up the corpse several times, the truth behind "Harry's" death is finally revealed.

No Hitchcock film divides viewers more than this one. Some consider the film a masterpiece of understated black comedy; others deem it a plot less, pointless time-waster. The film was a fairly massive box office flop at the time (audiences obviously felt from the movie poster that they were going to see a murder mystery, and were disappointed to actually find themselves experiencing a bizarre, off-kilter black comedy). In retrospect, I'd say The Trouble With Harry is a great film that was probably a good two decades ahead of its time. The performances are wonderfully outrageous, especially the elders (Gwenn and Natwick) who give perceptive comic turns that actors nowadays just don't seem to have the range to do. Forsythe and MacLaine are delightful too (the latter in her movie debut), and Royal Dano rounds off the cast as a gullible cop who nearly finds out that the other four have been up to no good. There's no doubt that The Trouble With Harry is an acquired taste; but if this taste is to your liking then you're in for a delectable treat!

One thing I really admire about Hitchcock was that he was willing to experiment, and wasn't content to make the same movie over and over. This meant that he sometimes made movies that puzzled his audiences, and several of them were out and out flops. But the passage of time has been kind to many of these movies which can be enjoyed for what they are, not what the audience WANTED them to be. 'The Trouble With Harry' is a great example. Many of Hitchcock's movies have humour in them, but an actual comedy was a bit left field for him. And not just any kind of comedy, a very black one. Humour is very subjective, but I found this movie to very clever and a lot of fun. It gets off to a bit of a shaky start with John Forsythe's character coming out with some unfunny lines and bits of business, but once the story kicks in and the characters played by Edmund Gwenn and Mildred Natwick are introduced, the movie becomes very amusing. Forsythe is technically the star of the movie, and Shirley MacLaine (in her movie debut) the leading lady, but Natwick, and especially Gwenn, steal the picture, and to me have the best lines. Edmund Gwenn was also in the underrated 1950s monster movie 'Them!', and I'm really fond of him. I also get a kick out of Royal Dano who plays the sheriff. Dano was a very interesting character actor who was in everything from 'Moby Dick' to 'Drum' to 'Killer Klowns From Outer Space'. To be totally honest 'The Trouble With Harry' wouldn't make it into my Top Ten Hitchcock movies, but that is only because he made so many great ones, and it's tough to choose, not because this is poor movie. If you want an edge of your seat thriller then maybe this isn't for you, but if you thought Hitch's droll introductions on his TV show were entertaining, then you should check this one out, as it's cut from the same cloth.

So it begins, the famous collaboration between suspense maestro Hitchcock and composer legend Herrmann to bring the world . . . a comedy? I went into the film not really knowing what to expect, though with Hitchcock's name I assumed thriller. Within minutes, though, Hitch and Benny helped me shift gears and accept Trouble with Harry for what it is: a tongue-in-cheek ride with a side of murder and a wicked sense of humor and dead on timing.

Within the opening five minutes, my jaw dropped at the sheer ludicrousy of the movie's premise – the offbeat reactions of all the characters to the troubled Harry – and how I laughed at the audacity the film had to throw so many off the wall characters into a situation that grew more and more outrageous with every passing frame and keep running with a straight face.

We get a retired ship captain, an old woman looking for love, a troubled widow, an artist with a taste for the weird, a dead guy, and it only gets more and more strange, folks. The plot? It goes in circles over and over and over again, and not much really happens as this group tries to figure out Harry and what to do with him. Needless to say, The Trouble with Harry walks dangerously close to disaster, but Hitchcock does something remarkable: he lets his style seduce the audience into suspending their disbelief, sitting back, and trusting the master of black comedy.

That is what I love about Hitchcock and about Trouble with Harry – he is so confident in his films and his audience that he knowingly presents the absurd where other filmmakers wouldn't dare go in fear of losing the audience. He knows precisely which ties to reality he can afford to cut free, and he so gracefully and fearlessly lets go of "realism" in favor of his own flavor of the surreal. The Trouble with Harry presents some of the goofiest characters to ever appear on screen with some of the strangest logic-defying ideas, and I love them for it.

How does it work? The film simply resonates with the charms Hitchcock fans have grown to adore – how the grassy hill looked like a set, the witty dialogue between the characters (the captain and Sam cracked me up every time), the mastery of frame composition (loved the first few shots of Harry), and Bernard Herrmann's delightful score that perfectly reflects the tone and feel of the film. Murder never felt so whacky and wonderful. It's that same world of Hitchcock that made us, the audience, forget about logic and realism when we viewed North by Northwest, Psycho, and Rear Window.

Realism is boring. As Sir Alfred, himself, stated, "Most films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake." And indeed, his world is so much more fun. Screw reality.

This movie is a gem that's easily overlooked since it is a comedy by the "master of suspense." Fans already know he had also mastered the art of black comedy, and the only phrase I need in describing the film to fellow Hitch fans is "pure cinema." The Trouble with Harry is Hitchcock at his best, and it's no trouble at all to sit through.

This is a real change-of-pace from Hitchcock, and some of his most devoted fans do not really enjoy "The Trouble With Harry", but it is quite entertaining if you appreciate Hitchcock's subtle British sense of humor. There are funnier black comedies, but this one holds up pretty well, and has a number of things going for it.

'Harry' appears only as a dead body, discovered at the beginning of the film in a clearing outside a picturesque New England town. More than one of the residents feels responsible for Harry's death - so, just by being there, Harry sets off a lengthy chain of events in the lives of several persons in the town. There are no tremendous laughs, but a lot of good low-key wit, much of it having to do what the situation brings out about the various characters' perspectives on themselves and others. The cast is pretty good, and the scenery is beautiful, some of the best in any Hitchcock film.

There is not the action or suspense in this one that most fans associate with Hitchcock. But if you appreciate Hitchcock's sense of humor - for example, the kinds of subtly ghoulish remarks that he used to make on his television shows - give it a try.

When I read the box at the video store, I thought it sounded a little silly, but since it was directed buy Hitchcock, I decided to give it a try. I was glad I did!

This film does a good job at showing what life is like (in a twisted way) in a small American town. Of course the whole thing is a black comedy about a corpse, but it's great fun, and suspenseful too, especially when Calvin is in the room, questioning everybody. I didn't understand why the door kept opening, but maybe it was just a joke - normally the door would signal a killer entering or something like that - but the door is never any cause for alarm.

All the actors are good, especially Gwenn, and Mrs. Gravely was so endearing. Don't ignore this lesser known Hitchcock movie. It's a treat to watch and is genuinely funny.