BEFORE: I've reached the halfway point (or thereabouts) in the Hitchcock filmography. I've done some reading up, and it turns out that Hitch filmed the "falsely accused" or "man on the run" storyline at least 11 times. So it's not my imagination that a lot of these have been working as variations on the same theme. Hitchcock carries over, tonight he has a cameo as a man playing cards on a train.
THE PLOT: A young woman discovers her visiting "Uncle Charlie" may not be the man he seems to be.
AFTER: I suppose this counts as a variation on "falsely accused", because in this case it takes so long for us to determine whether the accused is guilty or innocent. A man is tracked down by two detectives while visiting his family in Santa Rosa, California - and he's one of two possible suspects in the case of a "merry widow" killer. This would be a man accused of marrying rich widows, and then killing them and keeping their money.
It sort of leads one to wonder why there would be TWO suspects. I mean, wouldn't the merry widow killer have to register for all those marriage licenses, and (assumingly) have to show some form of I.D., again and again? This is another case of a Hitchcock story not having much confidence in law enforcement, I guess. Damn, the guy signed three marriage licenses and skipped town all three times, if only we had some way of proving his identity.... Huh?
Things got a little confusing for me about 2/3 of the way through, when it seems like the other suspect has been confirmed as the killer, so it seems like Uncle Charlie's in the clear. But instead this seems to put more pressure on him, not less, so what gives? Why didn't this settle the matter, or did I miss something?
Starring Teresa Wright (last seen in "Somewhere in Time"), Joseph Cotten (last seen in "Heaven's Gate"), Henry Travers (last seen in "The Invisible Man"), Hume Cronyn (last seen in "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), Macdonald Carey, Wallace Ford, Patricia Collinge.
RATING: 5 out of 10 headlines
No comments:
Post a Comment