Le procès Paradine

I liked this one, even though most people don't. It's a fascinating tale, and it seems very much Hitchcockian. Sure, it seems to drag at times, but the plot, directing, and the acting is good. Louis Jourdan is probably the best actor in this whole production. And to think this is his first English-speaking film. Gregory Peck is pretty good, also. I liked at the beginning when the cops arrested Alida Valli, and the audience isn't really sure why that is. Andre Latour's (Jourdan) little breakdown (I use breakdown for want of a better word) in the courtroom is terrific. I really love this movie, and I don't care how boring other people say it is. I would recommend this movie to anyone who thinks they can appreciate it.

Why does this movie seem so dull? The acting isn't bad once you get past Gregory Peck's British accent. None of the performances are outstanding, they're just not bad. The roles restrict the performers' range. I think Alida Valli smiles once. Louis Jourdan seems to have only one expression, a bitter, barely controlled anger. If he tried to smile he might crack. The actor given the best lines is Charles Laughton, who hams it up and brings a bit of life to the screen. "Remarkable how the convolutions of a walnut resemble those of the human brain." And that flabby, sweaty palm as he takes the hand of Peck's wife, squeezes it lasciviously, and places it on his thigh.

Well, I can think of three reasons why it's dull.

(1) It's overwritten. The script needed somebody like Daryl F. Zanuck to hack out some of the underbrush. Peck is questioning Valli in court. It goes something like this: Peck: "What did you say to Latour." Valli: "I told him to leave the room." Peck: "But why did you tell him to leave?" Valli: "Because I no longer wanted him present." Peck: "And why did you no longer want him present?" Valli: "His presence was disturbing." And so on. How did the jury stay awake? Some of the scenes are pointless. Not the sort of interesting meanders you might find in other Hitchcock movies. Just pointless. Peck visits a country house to talk to Latour, who promises to show him the garden and then beats it pronto. An hour or two later Latour shows up banging on the window of Peck's room at the inn, having changed his mind for no apparent reason. The five-minute conversation that follows could have been condensed into half that time and benefited from some supplementary bits of business. Instead the two adversaries sit there like mahogany idols hiding information from one another. That's a poor script for you.

(2) Hitchcock's imagination seems to have been asleep during the shooting. Perhaps the director himself was asleep. (It happened from time to time.) It isn't necessary for every Hitchcock film to have a bravura shot in it. The camera needn't always swing down from an upper story and wind up with a closeup of the key in someone's hand. But there is, maybe, one shot in this flick that bespeaks Hitchcock. When Andre Latour is first called into the courtroom as a witness, Hitchcock keeps the camera focused on Valli's face in the defendant's chair and circles it slowly around her so that we see Jourdan walking slowly into the room past her, behind her, and can almost feel her incandescent desire to turn around and look directly at him.

(3) Hitchcock had a great sense of humor and it's entirely absent from this movie. It must in fact rank among the least humorous films he's ever made. And it's surprising, because he was usually able to insert some piece of business into even his most serious works. (Not including "Vertigo.") Often the humor centers around meals. A dowager stubs out a cigarette in a jar of cold cream, or the yolk of a fried egg. A police inspector is forced to eat fancy dishes that a Kurdish camel driver would turn up his nose at. Or the humor lies in montage, as in "The Man Who Knew Too Much," when Jimmy Stewart escapes from a clumsy set-to with the staff at a taxidermist's and the scene ends with a shot of a stuffed lion's head gaping at the slammed door. SOMEthing, anyway, to lighten things up. But not here.

Put it all together and you have a pretty dull movie, one of the several serial flops that Hitchcock ground out in the post-war period. It isn't exactly painful to sit through. It's just that it's not very enjoyable.

With all the proficiency in production for which both Hollywood veterans were recognized, David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock seemed to go halves in creative effort on a polished piece of stagnant entertainment in their ceremonial Paradine Case. Dub it a mystery melodrama, even if that doesn't completely sum it up any more than it did Rebecca, a preceding, much superior production by the two. Classify it as a romantic courtroom would-be tragedy alongside a marriage soap opera. It's all of these things rolled together in one intermittently interesting movie, effortlessly told via Hitchcock's sophisticated camera.

If you recall the lingering distress which Rebecca, the apparition femme fatale of that film, set off all the other characters, albeit she herself was dead, that's the kind of shadowy trouble that the poised Mrs. Paradine affects all the characters in this narrative, except she's quite alive. Nevertheless, her husband, a blind man, is dead and she's on trial for his murder. The story itself has much prospective tension, especially putting Mrs. Paradine at the hub of the drama. It's never cut and dried what she's up to and though the seductive effect of a woman under suspicion on a man with influence is and was nothing new, the plot progresses on its own distinctive path, as she is a distinctive character. The issue is that, unlike Hitchcock's British films, this American Hitchcock film set in Britain dulls the blade of the dramatic elements and turns. Hitchcock's camera has a way of acting like an adept trial lawyer, whirring calmly along with customary material and swiftly punctuating with fluent theatrics, and also unsurprisingly, the movie's furnishings have a lush David O. Selznick guise. However, despite Hitchcock's simplistic mastery of when and how to move the camera, each scene is a dialogue piece that I, to my own surprise, found would be much more impactful in other, perhaps grittier and more contemporary hands.

Slowly, overemotionally, but gracefully enough, this picture files the potentially much more intriguing story of the eponymous widow's swaying lure over many who are impinged on by her trial, in addition to a predetermined eye-opener to the nature of the character herself. It makes a pale wink at the covetousness she provokes in the officiating judge, a typically sharp-tongued Charles Laughton whose urbane hostility has altogether sent his wife over the edge, another powerful narrative element that seems to have been glossed over. There's also disquieting suggestion of Mrs. Paradine's clutch on her husband's valet, a man upon whom keen suspicion is aimed before and during the trial, though mainly it follows the zeal she rouses in the stiff-postured man appointed as her defending counsel and of the torment this causes his wife.

Gregory Peck is fervent as the prominent young London barrister who lets his heart, callously ensnared by his client, control his head, while Ann Todd would be much more persuasively grief-stricken as his wife were it not for Franz Waxman's gushy score being poured on her every word like syrup. Italian import Alida Valli makes the confined Mrs. Paradine a composite of inscrutability, ambiguity and sensuality, and Louis Jourdan is pretty intense as the harassed valet.

It isn't a momentous Hitchcock effort by a long shot, save to the degree that it infers the cave dweller beneath everyone's practiced etiquette and concrete integrity and barristers' wigs. And it isn't a momentous script either, for the intent of cinema that is, developed by Selznick himself from Robert Hichens' novel. After a hazy buildup of evidence and of passion in the lawyer's heart, the story finally goes into a static but enthralling courtroom and thankfully remains there for most of the second hour.

I loved the film not because of its courtroom drama but because of Hitchcock's ability to deal with the drama outside the courtroom.

First, take in the shots that lead up to Alida Valli's character being arrested and locked up in the cell. Hitchcock is at his best building up the positive and elegant side of the character by enhancing the details--the expensive jewelry, the lady ensuring her hair is in place before receiving visitors, the humanist care taken to inform the valet that she would not be having her dinner, etc., etc. The build-up of the character within a few minutes of reel time for the viewer is considerably intelligent right up to the loud slamming of the cell door and the effect it has on the inmate (Hitchcock's own phobia?).

The second sequence that is unforgettable for me is the camera zooming in on Ann Todd's naked shoulder followed by the lecherous Charles Laughton caressing Todd's hand hidden away from her husband's vision, leading up ultimately to Todd's rejection of Laughton's advances. What is of consequence is not the performance of Todd or Laughton, but Hitchcock's sequence of visuals deftly edited to enhance the effect.

A third unusual image of the film is the introductory shot of Louis Jordan. This is the only film in my memory where a character is introduced without the least shred of light falling upon his/her face--his legs and hands are quite visible, but not his face.

Finally, the meetings in the jail between Valli and Peck smolders without a kiss or a physical touch. In my view, the performance of Valli is outstanding. Her remarkable turns in films by Visconti ("Senso") and Bertolucci ("1900") proved her capability.

The film belongs to Hitchcock, Valli and the camera-work of Lee Garmes (shots within the courtroom--probably the angles were suggested by the director). It is an unusual Hitchcock film with an elegant turn by Alida Valli. It is a film that cries out loud for a reassessment among Hitch's body of work. It is a major film of the director--though it is not an obvious one. Hitchcock seems to ask the viewer at the end of the film a difficult question--who is the true heroine of the film? And he has a MacGuffin...

OK, so it wasn't the most suspenseful movie Hitchcock ever made, but what a cast! Whenever you can get Charles Laughton, Ethel Barrymore, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll, AND an exceedingly pretty Louis Jordan on the same screen at the same time, you know you're in for a treat. Laughton, as the judge, alone is worth the time spent watching this film.

True, they don't make "talky" pictures like this anymore, but that's half the fun. I think Maltin's 2 1/2 stars is just about right.