The Petrified Forest (1936)

**spoiler warnings**

Rare is the film in which Bette Davis plays a likable character. Her stage roles always seemed to mimic the real life hardness for which she is noted, so it is refreshing to find her so appealing in the role of an ingenue. Not only is she fabulous in this movie, though, but her co-stars, Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart, give equally strong performances, making The Petrified Forest extremely memorable despite its depressing ending - sorry if I gave away a major plot point there. This film is also significant because it marks the first major role that Bogart ever played, reprising the part he played on Broadway at the absolute insistence of his good friend Leslie Howard.

Bette Davis plays a poetically-touched waitress working at a rest-stop diner in the Arizona desert. When a disillusioned writer (Leslie Howard) wanders in one day, the two are drawn together as kindred spirits, and  Davis's optimistic ambition to see the world rekindles Howard's long-extinguished faith in humanity. Howard intends to continue on his journey, but the arrival of a dangerous gangster (Humphrey Bogart) prevents him from leaving, as Bogart proceeds to hold the entire diner hostage while he waits for his girlfriend to join him. As the evening wears on and tensions mount, Howard looks at his worthless life and considers how he has nothing to offer Bette Davis, with whom he has fallen in love. He hits upon the idea, however, to name Davis as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy and then letting Bogart kill him, which the surly gangster agrees to do after he makes his rendezvous. The arrival of the law on the scene seems to prevent Howard's quixotic self-sacrifice, and after confessing his love to Davis, he seems to regain to will to live. But in a final act of serendipity, Howard tries to prevent Bogart's escape, and gets gunned down.

There's a strange kind of determinism and nihilism in this movie which makes it difficult to watch. Howard's character has strange premonitions that he will die there in the Petrified Forest, and he seems to think it poetically appropriate because he feels fossilized by his irrelevance and sense of powerlessness. Davis, too, seems to be destined to doff the her mundane surroundings and seek the adventure she longs for, and the achieves this means despite all plot twists, just as Howard achieves his sacrificial death. Howard's gesture is supposed to be noble, but I don't really know how much of a sacrifice it really is because he seems so careless of his life at times. Instead he feels at times like a suicide looking for a place to happen, and even though he seems to regain the will to live near the end, the way he flings himself in front of Bogart in the end feels truly needless because he really has no way of preventing Bogart's escape, and really just stands there and blocks the door before getting shot.

Despite these dismal images, there's also a movement towards searching for a reason to live, mostly depicting in people urging Davis to embrace her dreams. Even Howard has flashes of a rebirth - ironic since he is heading for Phoenix on the way to the pacific ocean - and as I said, his death is supposed to be redemptive because it will enable Davis to do what she wants with her life. Still, the pallor of death hangs so heavily over Howard's character that his rejuvenation seems more like that of the penitent thief on the cross saying, "Lord, remember me in your Kingdom!" than an actual Christ figure. So despite well-drawn characters and outstanding acting, this movie does not leave the audience edified as the best of tragedies do (Shakespeare, for example). It's philosophical examinations, however, bear viewing, however, if only to disagree with them.


I give this film a 7.5 for very strong acting, and an engaging, if not ultimately successful story.


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The Petrified Forest

The 39 Steps (1935)

Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll hide from
dangerous spies in Alfred Hitchcock's
comedy/thriller The 39 Steps

I don't know if The 39 Steps is the best of film in Hitchcock's British oeuvre, but it's certainly the most popular and a personal favorite of mine. Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll star in this extremely fun yarn following Hitchcock's favorite plot device: the ordinary man caught in a spy intrigue, a trope he used again and again in such films as Sabotage, Saboteur, The Lady Vanishes, Foreign Correspondent, Secret Agent, Notorious, The Man Who Knew Too Much (both versions), and North by Northwest - I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting in there as well.

 What makes this movie work so well is the combination of a fast, suspenseful plot, colorful characters, and great situational humor that is often hilarious. When a beautiful spy is found murdered in Richard Hannay's (Robert Donat) apartment, the police naturally assume he's the culprit when in reality though, he was just an innocent bystander. Before she died, however, the spy confided her mission to him, so now Hannay must go on the run from the police in order to stop a dangerous group of foreign agents before they smuggle sensitive information out of the country. That's the plot in a nutshell, and of course there are exciting and funny complications along the way such as quirky Scottish farmers and a political rally that Hannay crashes. He ends up hand-cuffed to a young woman (Madeleine Carroll), whom he must convince of his innocence in order to continue on his journey.

Apart from an abrupt ending, which is typical of films from the '30s,  I really can't find many faults with this movie. Robert Donat is an absolute delight as Richard Hannay: quick-witted, erstwhile, sarcastic, occasionally playful, and completely believable as an ordinary man drawn on an extraordinary quest. Madeleine Carroll is also perfect as the woman who unwillingly comes to believe in his improbable tale and falls for him in the process. As good as the two lead actors are, however, the show is really stolen by the wonderful and silly cast of minor characters, my favorite of which are the Scottish innkeeper and his wife.  In addition the dialog is crisp as a bag of chips and Hitchcock's direction really gets the most out of each scene in terms of suspense and irony. In all, it's about as much fun as you can have with a Hitchcock movie, which is saying something indeed.

Many people compare this movie to the other great early/British Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes, which is also a wonderful film, but I think this one works better simply because the pacing is much faster. Whereas, as my colleague Publius already noted in his review of The Lady Vanishes, the first twenty minutes of the aforementioned film are rather slow, The 39 Steps starts quickly, with an attempted murder within the first five minutes, and things only escalate from there. Things are kept, however, from getting overly intense by the comical situations, making this one of those movies you can watch over and over again with pleasure.

I give this movie an 8.3 out of 10, a true Hitchcock masterpiece.


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The 39 Steps,  Sabotage / The Lodger, The Lady Vanishes: The Criterion Collection, Saboteur,The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest (50th Anniversary Edition), Foreign Correspondent, The Secret Agent, Notorious

Vertigo (1958)

Many people regard this film as Hitchcock's magnum opus. It was made at the height of his artistic powers in the mid-to-late 1950s, and starts one of his favorite actors James Stewart in one of the darker, edgier roles that became a staple of that great actor's late career. It's also probably the most emotionally complex and morally ambiguous of Hitchcock's films, which is probably why it's always been a favorite with critics.

For me, however, Vertigo has always been one of those movies that I can admire only from an artistic perspective. As innovative and influential as the film is, I cannot love it  with the same affection that I have for other great Hitchcock works such as Rear Window, Rebecca, Notorious, and The 39 Steps (my four favorites). Both the dark ending and James Stewart's actions in the final reel combine to alienate me from the plot and characters emotionally, leaving me strangely repelled as the curtain closes.

Set in San Francisco, Vertigo tells the story of John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stuart), a detective who is forced to retire after he nearly falls off a roof and watches one of his fellow officers plummet to his death, a trauma which has afflicted him with a severe case of acrophobia. When an old college friend asks Ferguson to trail his wife Madeline (Kim Novak), whom he fears is going insane, Scottie agrees reluctantly but soon comes to agree that the woman is dangerously unbalanced. She appears to be suffering from psychotic episodes where she believes herself to be her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, a kept woman in 1850 San Francisco who went insane and killed herself after her lover deserted her and took their child with him. This theory seems to be confirmed when Scottie watches Madeline throw herself into San Francisco Bay, at the dangerous currents at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. After the rescues her from drowning, the two fall in love, and she confides in him  the strange visions she's been having. Scottie discovers from these clues that she's been dreaming about the Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista, so he takes her there hoping to cure her of mania. Unfortunately her presence there triggers an episode, and she runs up the steeple of the mission and flings herself off. Scottie, of course, tries to stop her, but his vertigo prevents him from getting up the steeple in time. Madeline's death sends Scottie into a complete mental breakdown from which he relapses when he meets a girl named Judy who looks amazingly similar to Madeline. He quickly becomes obsessed with this girl and drawn at the same time by an almost supernatural force towards the shocking truth about Madeline's death.

I'll start by saying that Hitchcock did a great job using real San Francisco and Bay Area locations for the filming. Hitchcock was a great lover of Northern California, as evidenced by the way he uses various locations it in this movie, as well as the towns of Santa Rosa in Shadow of a Doubt and Mendocino famously in The Birds. The City by the Bay lives and breathes in this film, feeling much the same in many scenes as it does today, especially the ones shot at Fort Point (underneath the Golden Gate Bridge), Mission Dolores (also known as Mission San Francisco de Assisi, after which the city of San Francisco was named), the Legion of Honor Museum, and the Palace of Fine Arts. San Juan Bautista also looks the same today, but that's because it's a historical museum so it's purposely preserved like that. In addition I tip my hats to them for using the rings on the section of the redwood tree in Muir Woods for Madeline to contemplate her own mortality as a great way to tie the movie's theme into local landmarks.The only two gaffes the movie's editors made were saying the Valdes house was located in the Western Addition when reality it appears to be across the street from Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill and driving the wrong way through Lincoln Park in one shot in order to get to the Legion of Honor.

You can tell Hitchcock really went all-out on this production in terms of cinematography not only because of the expense he went to by shooting on-location but also because the images and techniques he incorporates to convey the growing insanity of Jimmy Stewart's character and the sensation of vertigo he feels. Of course in the post-CGI revolution world, they appear childish and corny at times, but to audiences of the 1950s they were an extremely innovative way to convey emotion. Despite this, I cannot help feeling that it represents a step backwards for the integrity of film-acting because it marks the beginning of the ascendancy of visual effects over acting prowess as a way of establishing verisimilitude and connection with the audience.

For me, however, this film really stops working when Scottie starts manipulating Judy in order to turn her into a Madeline substitute. It's not that I don't believe that Scottie would want to turn Judy into Madeline, but the way in which he goes about affecting the transformation is so disturbing . Any woman who's ever been trapped in an abusive relationship will be horrified at how Scottie traps Judy into changing her wardrobe and hairstyle, telling her things like "It can matter to you." This is so callous, so selfishly manipulating - to say nothing of being a strange fetish - that I lose all sympathy for Scottie and instead can only feel extreme pity for Judy, who, like most women in abusive relationships, cannot extricate herself from the bad situation because of her feelings for her abuser. I will say, however, that until that point I believe every stage of Scottie's grieving process including his following Judy around and wanting to date her. I find it especially heartbreaking when he goes to Madeline's house and stares at her car - it's one of those things that people who've experienced the tragic death of a loved one understand all too well.

I have two final complaints to lodge about this film, the first about the plot and the second about the acting. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that I don't buy Judy wearing the fateful necklace around Scottie because she'd have to be really stupid to think he wouldn't recognize it. I'd understand him discovering it inside her jewelry box because it fits with his obsessive behavior, but it doesn't make sense for her to put on the necklace around him as if she didn't know its significance. As to the acting, I also have to say that Kim Novak's performance as Madeline seems lacking to me when she's having her sane moments. When she's acting insane I believe her, but when she's supposed to be acting normal, she comes off as so wooden that I lose all suspension of disbelief on her performance.

Despite these flaws and despite my persona distaste for it, Vertigo remains an extremely significant film in the history of the cinematic arts. With all the masterful suspense of a Hitchcock classic, the dark fascination with the macabre and honest portrayal of human frailty, this film has been holding audiences spellbound for over fifty years for a very good reason. Unlike my favorite Hitchcock films, however, this movie plunges us so deep into the darkest parts of reality without enough relief from the light so to make it emotionally stable. I have no doubt that this is exactly the effect Hitchcock intended, but for me that makes it too intense to enjoy it as much as I'd like to. I can, however, still watch it with a kind of detached admiration.

I give this film a 7.5 out of 10, well-executed with a decided vision and great cultural significance, but not to my taste.


buy from Amazon:
Vertigo (Collector's Edition), Rear Window (Collector's Edition), The 39 Steps: The Criterion Collection, Rebecca, Notorious

Suspicion (1941)

Joan Fontaine wonders if her husband (Cary Grant)
is trying to kill her in this Hitchcock classic.

For her performance in this Hitchcock classic, Joan Fontaine received an Oscar, considered to be an apology from the Academy for snubbing her the previous year in Rebecca - also directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In reality, if there were a make-up Oscar to be awarded for Suspicion, it should have gone to Cary Grant, who also got snubbed by the Academy the year before for his performance in The Philadelphia Story  (the Oscar went to his co-star James Stuart, a move that is almost universally regarded as a mistake). Ironically, Grant would not only get passed over again in 1941, but he would also be denied the statuette again in 1942 after giving one of his most powerful performances in Penny Serenade.  Of the three films, however, perhaps this one best showcases his great versatility as an actor.

As good as Fontaine is in her role of protagonist in this film, it is Grant who sells it for us.  For this movie to work at all, we must feel that Fontaine's suspicion of Grant is warranted, and thus Grant must appear to be equally guilty and innocent, and intriguing mixturn e of good and evil. Fortunately for the audience, Cary Grant can be menacing just as well as he can be charming and the result is an oft-overlooked gem in the Hitchcock cannon.

Part of this brilliant ambiguity, however, stems both from Hitchcock's great directing prowess and the fact that the film producers honestly didn't know whether or not to make Grant's character a murderer. This resulted in the need to shoot the movie in a manner that would support both endings, a ploy which, as I intimated, keeps us guessing along with Fontaine.

From the very first scene, we are aware along with Joan Fontaine's character that Grant is a bit of a bounder, but we can't help liking him anyway for his roguish impudence and charm. A shy bookworm with no marriage prospects, Fontaine soon falls under his spell and decides to elope with him despite her parents' disapproval. Soon after the honeymoon, however, Fontaine learns that her new husband is drowning in gambling debts and mortgaging their future away in order to maintain the upper-class lifestyle they've both been used to. More disconcerting still, he seems to have counted on Fontaine's fortune being larger than what her parents want to give her, and upon her father's death, cannot hide his disappointment at her small inheritance.

Things become only worse when Fontaine learns that Grant has lost his job on account of embezzling a large sum of money, and he must either repay it soon or risk jail - all of which he had been concealing from her. Then there's the matter of his best friend's suspicious death right after they pooled their money into a corporation - and an Englishman matching Grant's description at the scene of the crime. And when Fontaine finds out that Grant has been checking into a life insurance policy on her, she fears that she will be his next victim.

My only real complaint about this movie is that despite great characterizations by Grant and Fontaine as well as a splendid supporting role by Nigel Bruce as Grant's ill-fated friend, we never really feel the same sense of danger that we do in Hitchcock's other movies. Like Fontaine, we can't figure out if the Grant's threat is real or imaginary, so we end up discounting some of the drama.


I give this film a 7.8 out 10, a solid Hitchcock outing, but not one of his finest works.

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Suspicion, Penny Serenade, The Philadelphia Story (Two-Disc Special Edition), Rebecca

Dark Passage (1947)

This is hands-down my favorite Bogie and Bacall film noir, and there are three reasons for this abiding love. First off, it's underrated. When people think of Bogart and Bacall films, the three that immediately pop to mind are The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, and Key Largo, all of which are excellent and memorable, but I think Dark Passage is just as good. Secondly, the film uses an innovative film technique to conceal Bogart's face for the first half of the film because his character is supposed to get plastic surgery to change his face. Bogart physically acts these first scenes, but the camera always shoots him at an angle that hides his face or opts for the first-person view. The only way we know what he's supposed to look like before the surgery is from newspaper clippings that use another actor's face. So the film gets points for challenging cinematography. Third and finally, Dark Passage takes the cake for having one of the most accurate uses of San Francisco and Bay Area geography ever put to film. In fact at the one point where I thought the perfection had been spoiled, one of the characters yells out that they're going the wrong way - my only complaint is it took him so long to figure it out.

The film starts out at San Quentin State Prison, about fifteen miles north of San Francisco in then-rural Marin County. Sirens blare because the dangerous murderer Vincent Parry has just escaped, and the camera then follows the fugitive while never actually showing the actor's face. He gets rid of his prison shirt and tries to hitchhike to the city, only to be picked up by a woman who knows exactly who he is but still offers to hide him in her car. This scene is filmed entirely on-location, and when you drive northbound on US-101 today, you can retrace their steps with your eyes. Their drive back south to SF retraces the highway with exact precision including the Golden Gate Bridge and the tunnel leading up to it.

Bacall then drives him back to her home on Telegraph Hill - another scene unequivocally filmed on-location - where he discovers her motive for helping him is that her father was falsely accused of murdering his wife on the same kind of flimsy, circumstantial case that convicted Parry. She offers him money and a disguise, but Parry rightly figures that with his picture plastered all over the paper, the only way to travel truly incognito would be to change his face via plastic surgery.

He does this, and intends never to bother Bacall again, but when he finds his only other confidant has been murdered, he is forced to impose on Bacall until his face can heal from the surgery. While convalescing, Parry has a long time to contemplate both his friend's murder and his own sorry plight. He figures the killer must have been the same person who murdered his wife, but he has no way to prove it. His only choice, therefore, is to flee the country before the police track him down through the fingerprints, which remain the same even though his face has been changed. In the meantime he has also fallen in love with Bacall while listening to the great jazz standard "Too Marvelous for Words," but dares not take her with him to lead a fugitive's life.

There's enough surprises in the plot that I dare not reveal anything else. Bogie and Bacall sparkle as usual in their roles, and Agnes Moorhead is wonderfully sinister as the dangerous jilted woman. There's also a wonderful moral dilemma to grasp with as more and more evidence piles up against Bogie and he is drawn to more and more desperate means to avoid unjust imprisonment.

This film, however, more than any I've ever seen remains special because it shows the Bay Area as it is instead of insulting the intelligence of its native citizens with incongruous geography and locations that don't remotely resemble the actual environs they're trying to depict. I know I am not the only person to complain about Hollywood treating their native city in this way, so on behalf of all those people, I offer Dark Passage as an example that yes, sometimes the film industry can get it right.

I give this movie a 8.4 out of 10 for innovative photography, great acting and a great story, and enviable geographic verisimilitude.



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Dark Passage (Snap Case), The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not (Keepcase), Key Largo (Keepcase)

I Confess (1953)

Wow.

"I Confess" is widely regarded as a mediocre entry in the Hitchcock canon. Certainly, in terms of the artistry and technical ingenuity, this film cannot compare to the greatest of Alfred Hitchcock's oeuvre. Even so, the film wrestles with issues of truth, morality, honor and the Catholic practice of faith in an almost unprecedented manner. "I Confess" may be my favorite out of all the films of Hitchcock.

The premise is simple enough: a man is murdered and a priest hears the murderer's confession. Under Catholic canon law, a priest is barred from revealing any information disclosed under the seal of confession. To my knowledge, this prohibition covers all confessions, even those that involve a crime... and even if the priest himself is suspected for that crime.

Continue reading at Worthy of Note.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

**This article was contributed by Publius, who maintains a book- and film-review site at Worthy of Note.  Enjoy this review of Hitchock's early classic!**

I don't consider myself much of a connoisseur of Hitchcock films.  I've seen my fair share -- "The 39 Steps" was my first, and "Rope" may be my favorite --  but my personal preference is for more recent films.  On the other hand, whenever I discover a new Hitchcock film I know for a fact that I'm in for a treat, so occasionally I carve out to time to watch one.  Thus I found myself watching "The Lady Vanishes," one of Hitchcock's last works before he moved to produce for American studios, and the film that firmly established his early reputation.

The first half-hour or so of the film is quite slow.  A large number of passengers are waiting for a train that has been snowed in, and must stay overnight at an already crowded inn.  We first see the events of the film through the eyes of two British gentlemen, Charters and Coldicott, utterly enraptured by the sport of cricket and utterly enraged at their inability to learn the score. They meet a young happy couple on their honeymoon -- a secret kept from both their real spouses -- and a chatterbox of an English governess, Ms. Froy (played by the inimitable Dame May Whitty).  At length we shift perspectives to Iris, a beautiful but rather spoiled young lady vacationing in Europe on her distant fiance's money. She bribes the innkeeper to stop the noise coming from the room above her, and meets the charming and worldly Gilbert, who was trying to transcribe a local country dance. Finally, as the night concludes, we return to Ms. Froy, listening in raptures to the trilling melody of a serenading guitarist.

As the music ends, the guitarist is strangled.

**Finish reading this article at Worthy of Note reviews**

Film Review: Dial M for Murder

A midnight phone call to Grace Kelly is the signal for murder
in this classic Hitchcock thriller.

Hitchcock in 3D! It sounds like a cheap gimmick in order to draw the crowds, and it was. But even top-name directors like Hitch were having problems getting people to go to the movies when they could stay home and watch their new-fangled television sets and get quality entertainment (Hitch himself would later give in to the phenomenon and launch the memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents.). It's a well-documented part of film history that Hollywood almost went bankrupt in the '50s with the advent of television, and in order to compensate, they had to start offering something in their films that people couldn't see on television. Color film was one of the first changes, but when the 3D craze hit, it gave the movie industry an unexpected boost, and suddenly studios were clamoring to make as many 3D movies as possible. Most of them have no redeeming value, having been filmed only for their visual effects, but there were some good movies made during that period in 3D, ones which are intrinsically good regardless of how many dimensions in which they're seen.

Hitchcock based most of his work off plays, novels, or short stories, and this gem from 1955 is no exception.
Almost all the action in Dial M for Murder takes place in a single set, the apartment of a supposedly happily married couple in Mayfair, London. It's soon revealed, however, that not so long ago the wife (Grace Kelly) was seriously contemplating leaving her husband (Ray Milland) because she was in love with someone else (Robert Cummings). When we meet her husband, we suddenly understand why she would want to leave him, especially when it comes out that he is plotting to murder her for her money. He thinks up the perfect scheme for murder, but you know what the poet Burns said about the "best laid plans of mice and men"...

The man he hires to do the dirty work ends up getting killed himself in the scuffle with the wife. Seemingly never at a loss, the husband then tries to frame her for the hit-man's murder--and does an excellent job. She's a day before the scheduled execution when the detective starts to have second thoughts.

Although the acting is excellent, this movie is really carried by the plot. Ray Milland's character devises such an airtight plot to kill his wife that it holds the audience spellbound as they watch it unfold. Then they naturally watch to see if she can avoid the unjust execution. The Master of Suspense is at the top of his game in this oft-overlooked film.


I rate this movie an 8 out of 10. A solid Hitchcock hit.

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Dial M for Murder

Film Review: Charade (1963)

Even strolling by the Seine with Cary Grant,
Audrey Hepburn cannot shake her fears of murder in Charade

The first time I saw this film, I was shocked to learn that it wasn't a Hitchcock; that's how good it is. Of course it was an easy mistake to make. When watching a slick, witty suspense film starring Cary Grant, of course one would think Hitchcock since Hitch used Grant in four of his masterful films: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946),  To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). This 1963 gem, however, was directed by long-time MGM musical and comedy director Stanley Donen, who made such classic films as Royal Wedding (1950), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Singin' in the Rain (1952), which he co-directed with Gene Kelly. So although Donen was highly credentialed, taking on a project like Charade which is charged with action and suspense was highly unusual and risky to say the least. The result, however, was a thoroughly entertaining film.

Without giving away too much of the plot, since half the fun of this movie is the curve balls it throws you, the action starts when American ex-patriot Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) returns home to her Paris flat to find that her husband has been murdered while attempting to flee the country with $250,000. Regina is at a loss to explain her husband's actions until a visit to the American embassy informs her that her husband was actually a former CIA agent who absconded with that money during the war. Now her husband's co-conspirators are threatening her life unless she can somehow figure out where her husband hid the cash, and the CIA wants it back too. Helping her along the way is a dashing fellow American (Cary Grant) whom she met in the Swiss Alps, but his evasive answers and outright lies make Regina reluctant to trust him despite her obvious attraction to him.Walter Matthau and James Coburn co-star as a CIA chief and one of the conspirators out for blood or money, respectively.

What keeps this movie from being too much as the bodies pile up, each murder more gruesome than the last, is the wonderful comedic talents of Cary Grant. A combination of witty dialog and Grant's stellar physical comedy abilities break up the tension and give both the audience and Audrey Hepburn's character new reasons to fall in love with the most attractive actor ever to grace the silver screen (Grant was 59 when he made this film, but still surprisingly handsome.) My favorite part has to be when he decides to take a shower with his clothes on.

This is also my favorite screen role for Audrey Hepburn, and certainly one of her most versatile. The way she alternately chases Cary Grant shamelessly and then repulses him always makes me laugh, and she runs the gamut of emotions perfectly from despondent to frightened to childishly glib. I honestly was never a Hepburn fan until I saw this film because I objected to her anorexic physique on the grounds that I've felt the repercussions of the media's obsession for thinness in women all too personally. I liked a lot of her other films, but I never thought her performance exceptional or memorable until this one (I don't count My Fair Lady because as good as she was in that film, I can't get over the fact that she didn't do her own singing, especially when Julie Andrews originated the role in the West End and Broadway. Epic fail, Hollywood. Epic fail.).

Despite my outright adoration for this film there are two things in it that I don't like. First I can't stand the scene at the nightclub in which participants must pass an orange to each other without the use of their hands. It was another scene designed to utilize Cary Grant's physical comedy skills, but it's awkward to watch and just too drawn-out. It eats up a good five minutes of an already long movie without adding anything to the plot. The second problem I have with it is that the deaths are too gory. Hitchcock understood that with suspense films less can be more, that not showing a murder can imprint it all the more deeply into an audience's consciousness, but Stanley Donen obviously didn't get this concept, showing us a graphic drowning victim, a slit throat victim, and a person who had been smothered. I'll admit to being a little bit of a wimp when it comes to violence, but it's especially jarring in such an old movie.

One last thing to note: Audrey Hepburn's last line of the film is one of my favorites ever.

I give this movie an 8.5 out of 10, one that can be watched almost ad infinum with pleasure.

Buy on DVD:

 Charade, Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Singin' in the Rain