BEFORE: Linking from "Rope", James Stewart was also in "Airport '77" with Joseph Cotten (last seen in "Shadow of a Doubt"). Yes, Hitchcock makes a cameo tonight as a party guest, but I'm all for doing things the hard way.
THE PLOT: A gentleman goes to Australia where he reunites with his now married childhood sweetheart, only to find out she has become an alcoholic and harbors dark secrets.
AFTER: This is one of Hitchcock's most obscure and least popular films - I don't know why he got bogged down in costumed melodrama, just when he was hitting his stride on murder and intrigue. But there's some mystery to this one, if you're willing to wait through 90 minutes of information about Australia and how people ran their households there back in Colonial times. The film informs us over and over that Australia started as a prison colony, a place where British ex-cons could go for a fresh start, which had the added benefit of getting them out of Great Britain.
Probably the most interesting thing about this film (and yesterday's film "Rope" did this as well) was the use of long takes, some as long as ten minutes (this would be the theoretical maximum, due to the necessity of changing the film in the camera every so often.) For "Rope" it created drawn-out, tension-filled moments that heightened the viewers' reactions to a crime, and here it just makes the film seem 18 hours long.
It's sort of akin to that particular paragraph that has an odd quirk to it, though you may not pick up on it at first - you may scan and scan it, and not grok what its distinguishing oddity is. It's known as a lipogram, and if you work at it a bit, you might find out what is so unusual about it. And soon you may find out that it is not an ordinary composition, though you may not know why. It is lacking a most common thing - a particular thing, that is an "E". (Damn, I almost made it...)
The film manages to kick into high gear in its last half hour, when things actually start to happen - but it spends a long time idling in low gear before it gets there - the story of how Charles gets Henrietta to come out of her shell and start experiencing life and parties again is a relatively low-key one. This sets up sort of a love triangle, and jealousy and deceit. It just takes way too long to get there.
Also starring Ingrid Bergman (last seen in "Notorious"), Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker,
RATING: 3 out of 10 stablehands
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