The Paradine Case

Alfred Hitchcock came to America to work for Selznick in 1939 when the latter was involved in the production of his masterpiece, Gone With The Wind. Yet their first completed project together was Rebecca, a great success which won the Best Picture Oscar the year later. Hitchcock's filmography shows that his producer then loaned his services to other studios (RKO, Universal, Fox...) while a frustrated Hitchcock still received the same weekly payment from him.

In 1946, the end of the contract was near and Selznick couldn't count on a future collaboration with him. Though he still had one pet project called The Paradine Case. He intended to make it a prestige picture with an all star cast, with none other than Greta Garbo in the title role. Unfortunately for him, the diva of the screen had no intention of leaving her retirement, especially to play a part she hated. So it was decided that Mrs. Paradine would be played by a young hopeful that Selznick wanted to launch in the USA, much like Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind. In retrospect, the part of a cold-blooded murderess may not be the ideal choice to introduce a new personality like Alida Valli (nicknamed "Valli" for the occasion).

In any case, Selznick was so eager to have another big success that he made a nuisance of himself, rewriting the script (he eventually got sole credit for it), demanding retakes, and even supervising the editing and sound mixing himself. The end result was the explosion of the budget. Would you ever guess, watching the film, that it cost more money than Gone With The Wind? Well it did!

Although Hitchcock objected many things (like Louis Jourdan who did a fine job but was, in his idea, badly miscast), some elements are obviously his. Ann Todd has trouble shining in a rather unattractive part but she is definitely part of the cool blonde Hitchcock canon. The intricate camera moves inside the Keane mansion will be developed in his next productions like Rope or Under Capricorn. And the sadistic personality of the judge must have appealed to him. Also, his often used character actor Leo G. Carroll plays a lawyer here and John Williams, another lawyer, would go on to play more substantial parts in two other Hitchcock films.

More to the point, the film, in its rough cut ran approximately 3 hours. At the premiere, it had been cut down to 132 minutes. The version generally available today runs about 115. According to Bill Krohn, a "flood" has destroyed the negative of the 3 hour version in the 1980s. He also reports that the 132 minute version is all that remains and yet even that one did not find its way to home video. In addition, two of the missing scenes from the 3 hour version are still extant, only without the sound; These are apparently kept at George Eastman House in New York.

One of these scenes originally took place right before the trial and is featured on a lobby card with Ethel Barrymore, Gregory Peck, Charles Laughton and the actor who plays the painter (possibly Alec Harford), Peter De Lindstrom (an obvious nod to Selznick star Ingrid Bergman whose husband was Petter Lindström and who was considered for the lead at one point). In it, Sophy, the judge's wife, met Keane secretly in an art gallery to ask him to save Mrs. Paradine's head because she couldn't cope with another evening with her husband when he has to sentence the death penalty. They ran into the judge talking to the artist who kindly offers to show Sophy his drawings, sensing the uneasiness in the air. Left alone, the judge tells Keane he has considered placing his wife in an institution.

I do not know if the scene was cut to reduced the length of the feature or to suppress the underlying implication that the Judge enjoys sending people to their deaths and the very obvious fact that he mistreats his wife. I should point out that, in the novel, the scene took place earlier in the story and that it had been discarded by the original script writers (including Hitchcock and his wife).

This re-release trailer contains a few alternate shots and deleted moments (check out Ethel Barrymore trying to hide in the audience).

The music of the film, although composed by famed composer Franz Waxman in an attempt to recreate the Rebecca atmosphere and success (particularly obvious when Kean explores Mrs. Paradine's bedroom), has not met with the same success and is now available only as reorchestrated rhapsody on CD. The music-only track of the DVD is the only way to hear it in its entirety.

The main title gives you an idea of the rushed job that was the whole affair: since Selznick could not decide between a plethora of working titles (Fascination, Bewitched, Under Oath,...), he finally went with the book's original title on the eve of the premiere, causing the font of the title to be different from the rest of the credits.


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That's all for today folks!

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Rope

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope will be released on Blu-ray in September, along with many other classics owned by Universal.
Of course, any cuts on this film had to be made before shooting in the script itself. And the topic made it the ideal target of censors: the movie was about "it". "It", being a very respectable way of meaning homosexuality. So the adaptation removed the very British (but also very ambiguous) use of the word "dear" spoken between men, and various other things. 
I'm eager to see the results of the re-mastering. I remember a time when we were lucky if a film had not been tampered with when released on home video.

I found an old British VHS tape of Rope. You'd think since the film is shot in long continuous takes, there was no way they could change anything.
Yet, not only is the opening Warner Brothers logo is also replaced by Universal's, but David Buttolph's arrangements of Francis Poulenc's "Mouvement perpétuel" are drowned into a different arrangement! You can still hear the original music under the overdubbing. Presumably, this was done to achieve a stereo effect during the very few moments where there was music.
 Here is the opening title in this version:

 And here is the end title:

For comparison, here is the film on youtube:

And the awesome especially filmed trailer which takes place before the film:

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Gaslight

Gaslight or When cinema tries to destroy itself.
Patrick Hamilton is a brilliant British play-write who penned among other things Rope's End, which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. In 1938, he wrote Gas Light, a play about a woman driven crazy by the very man she loves so he can get his hands on some hidden jewels.







The play was filmed for TV with Judith Evelyn (Miss Lonelyheart in Rear Window) and Henry Daniell (Vincent Price appears in this Life Magazine picture) but the two adaptations that stand out today were made for the silver screen.

In 1940, British International Pictures produced a film directed by Thorold Dickinson starring Diana Wynyard (previously nominated for an Academy Award in Cavalcade). The suffocating story and its original source are not the only links to the world of Hitchcock.

The film is shot by Bernard Knowles who was Hitch's cinematographer throughout most of his British period. Actor Robert Newton (Most famous for playing Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island) had played in Hitchcock's last British film Jamaica Inn the previous year before the director headed to America.

Last but not least, the score was composed by little known British marvel Richard Addinsell, who later composed Under Capricorn, and conducted by Muir Mathieson who later conducted Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo when the 1957 musician strike prevented the composer from doing it himself.

Have you ever heard a musical theme which was so great that you felt you had known it all your life?
That's what happened to me when the credits rolled on that film. The music is that beautiful. A restored re-orchestrated medley was issued on CD but the score remains to be completely published.

The film was such a hit that it spun a remake by MGM starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, and introducing Angela Lansbury.

Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman & Joseph Cotten (1944 remake)

So how is this film relevant to this blog? Well, believe it or not, the success of a film can also be the cause of its loss! When MGM released their 1944 version of Gaslight, even though the previous film had been retitled "Angel Street" in the USA, they tried to have the negative and all prints of this film destroyed.

Allegedly thanks to director Thorold Dickinson, at least one print survived and the film is now available on DVD. Ironically, the print used on the DVD starts with an out-of-place MGM logo and music from a different film (I believe Jacques Tourneur's Romance of Radium), it then jump-cuts to the film's main title. The original musical intro was broadcast on the BBC a few years ago. Here it is:

And here is the film available in its entirety on youtube (with the MGM logo):

I also recommend the 1944 remake (This DVD has both films on it). Ingrid Bergman is simply divine as always and Angela Lansbury is devilishly pretty in her debut.

On the set of the 1944 remake

Here is a rare glimpse behind the scene of the two films during a very similar scene. If you're wondering what the two leading ladies are doing, you should know that corsets and other wardrobe requirements prevented actresses from sitting down and they used to recline on these "stand-up seats" between takes.


If you wish to see how a feeling of intense relief can be conveyed only through camera movements and music, watch the last shot of the original film. I find it mesmerizing.
[2014 update: the film is now available in a wonderful UK Blu-ray edition with a print restored by the BFI.]

That's all for today folks!

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