Dtkoyzis

Freud had only recently passed from the scene when this film was made, and the plot is evidence of the rather simplistic popular understanding of the early psychoanalysis. It now seems hopelessly naive to assume that merely uncovering the demons of one's past will effectively erase the emotional pain they have produced and thereby "cure" the patient. Yet this is the premiss of the film.

The plot looks both backward and forward in Hitchcock's development as a director. Backward: to his favourite 1930s plotline, as found in "The 39 Steps" and "Young and Innocent", of a man fleeing the law and attempting to clear his name of a crime he did not commit. Forward: to the likes of "Psycho" and "Marnie" in the 1960s, where the mystery revolves around uncovering the psychological motivations of a person's actions. Was this the first of Hitch's psychological thrillers? It may well have been.

In this case Peck plays the recently arrived director of a hospital for the mentally ill, who doesn't quite know what he's supposed to know to perform his new role. It soon becomes clear he is not the man he claims to be. In the meantime, of course, the previously dedicated and workaholic Bergman is uncharacteristically smitten with him and, like Nova Pilbeam in "Young and Innocent", runs off with him to help him clear both his name and his head. If there is any suspense in this film, it is found in Bergman risking her career to help a man who she thinks is probably not a criminal but cannot be absolutely certain of it. The plotline is, of course, utterly ridiculous, without the slightest hint of credibility. But Bergman and Peck are sufficiently good actors to make it work.

They are aided by the efforts of Salvador Dali, who put together the famous dream sequence, and of Miklós Rózsa, who composed a great score that is simultaneously romantic and eerie. Without these men's contribution, this film would likely be judged one of Hitch's lesser efforts.

I had trouble finding this film in the local video store but finally saw it on television. It's well worth watching. It's a wonderful commentary on the American suburban corporate culture emerging in the years following the second World War. Peck plays the stereotypical businessman living in Connecticut and taking the New Haven Railroad into New York City each day. He is faced with a number of seemingly mundane dilemmas, such as settling a deceased relative's estate, how to deal with a dissatisfied wife more ambitious than he, whether to switch jobs for better pay, and whether he should tell his new boss what he *needs* rather than *wants* to hear. Hanging over him are the ever-present memories of his wartime combat experience, which intrude on him occasionally – especially during those otherwise empty hours spent commuting on the train.

I disagree with the reviewer who found the film boring apart from the war scenes. One of the reasons why this film works so well is that it regularly jolts the viewer, nearly lulled into complacency by the apparent ordinariness of suburban life, with those sudden flashbacks of the horrors of war. The juxtaposition of these quite different scenes was quite deliberate and speaks volumes in itself. How is it possible for someone who has spent four years both killing and avoiding death to settle into a normal life of family and work? Obviously it's not easy.

Furthermore, death continues to haunt the family in various, almost light-hearted ways, particularly by way of the children who were born after the carnage had ended and for whom death is no more real than the gunfights in those television westerns to which they are so conspicuously addicted. A scene near the beginning has one of the girls suffering from chicken pox, a fairly minor malady, as everyone knows. But she tells her father she has "small pox" and her sister keeps teasing her with the morbid suggestion that she is going to die. The father tells her to stop, but she keeps it up. He knows what death is all about; his children do not.

The term "workaholic" had not yet been coined in 1956, but the contrast between the man who chooses a fuller, less driven life – including time for family – and the man married to his career could not have been more starkly portrayed. The viewers find themselves applauding the choice Peck eventually makes and pitying March for not having done so himself.

I am a great fan of the score's composer, Bernard Herrmann, whose music is uniquely capable of evoking a range of strong emotions in the listener. The music here is typically Herrmann, although it is not as central a "character" in this film as are his scores in, say, "Vertigo" and "Psycho." It is impossible to imagine the latter two films without the music, while this film seems less obviously dependent on its score.

Although I quite liked this film, it is overly long and could have been better edited. The several subplots needed to be better integrated into the whole. What, for example, was the purpose of the challenge to Peck's inheritance, other than to show the persistent salvific role Cobb played in his life? This subplot could easily have been cut and the film would have suffered nothing in terms of its overall impact. In fact, it might have been better for being more tightly constructed.

This is one of the better of the early Hitchcock's British-made films, probably second only to "The Lady Vanishes." It is also the one that has been remade the most number of times – in 1959 and again in 1978. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by John Buchan, who, incidentally, became Governor General of Canada under the title of Lord Tweedsmuir the very year the film was released.

The plot will be familiar even to Hitchcock fans who happened to miss this movie. A visiting Canadian, played by Donat, is falsely accused of the murder of a beautiful spy who had sought refuge in his London flat. Like Cary Grant a quarter-century later in "North by Northwest," he is forced to flee both the law and an international spy ring, heading north to Scotland to seek out a man missing part of his little finger who turns out to be the ringleader. While fleeing south again he is kidnapped and handcuffed to Carroll and, naturally enough for a Hitchcock film, an initial friction between the two eventually blossoms into romance as she is increasingly persuaded of his innocence. The action is fast-paced and there are some wonderfully amusing scenes. My favourite found Donat accidentally thrust onto the platform of a by-election campaign rally and forced to improvise a political speech as if he himself were introducing the candidate. The humour lies in his actually pulling it off to the audience's satisfaction and applause!

There are a few scenes of a sexually suggestive nature that probably would not have appeared in an American film at that time, although they might have only two years earlier before the adoption of the Hayes Code. One has Donat and Carroll checking into a small hotel together, with the proprietors uncertain whether or not they are married. Another is a closeup of Carroll removing her stockings while handcuffed to Donat.

Virtually everyone notes the appearance in two brief scenes of a very young Peggy Ashcroft, the famous Shakespearean actress. I myself didn't like these scenes. Although Hitchcock was a Roman Catholic, he was apparently not above stereotyping the man of faith (John Laurie) as a dour, humourless wife-beater whose one positive contribution is a bullet-stopping hymnbook! I can't help wondering whether C. S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton saw the film and, if so, what they would have thought of such a one-sided portrayal.

Three more flaws keep this from being a masterpiece. First, like many of Hitch's early efforts, it has something of a rough, amateurish feel to it. (Admittedly, part of this may be due to a physical deterioration of the film over the decades, but it's difficult to tell for sure this many years later.) Second, Donat's accent is obviously not that of a Canadian. Surely I'm not the only Canadian to have noticed this? Third, it all ended too abruptly. I found the final scene something of a letdown.