There are movies that I want so badly to like that I get them out every few years to give them another spin. Two random titles that come to mind are Scream and Scream Again and Master of the World: I keep hoping they’ll be better than they are. Sometimes I rediscover what didn’t work about them, but more often I re-enter a puzzle in which the frequent question is, ‘why did they make that strange choice?’ Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case is problematic for several reasons, almost all of which involve producer David O. Selznick. Hitchcock apparently saw an opportunity to do a gritty critique of British class excesses, while Selznick simply wanted a star-studded glamour piece.
The features still aligned with the Selznick-owned collection have moved between several home video distributors in the last twenty years. Most of them have been in need of improved transfers for quite a while. Now the library has been licensed to Kino, so we’re eager to see whether the rights holders will spring for decent new scans, or recycle the same old tired masters. More on that concern below.
For better or worse The Paradine Case has the reputation of being one of Alfred Hitchcock’s losers. But is it? As one his last assignment under contract to producer/talent broker David O. Selznick, this title charms some people but confuses a lot more.
We’re in London. Distinguished trial lawyer Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck) has a reputation for never losing a case. He takes on the murder defense of Mrs. Maddalena Anna Paradine (Alida Valli, billed as just Valli), who is accused of poisoning her husband, a respected hero blinded in the war. Paradine is a total mystery. She keeps her thoughts and emotions private, yet communicates an attraction toward Keane that disturbs his judgment, and almost ruins his marriage to the understanding Gay (Ann Todd). Gay must weather both the indignity and helplessness of seeing her husband’s affections stray, while also enduring the petty advances of trial Judge Lord Thomas Horfield (Charles Laughton). He’s a pompous womanizer who treats his poor wife Lady Sophie (Ethel Barrymore) terribly.
Anthony travels to the Paradine country home to investigate valet Andre Latour (Louis Jourdan), who may have aided Paradine in commiting suicide. Latour is hostile and uncooperative with Keane. Upon learning of this visit, Maddalena becomes abrasive as well. When the case goes to trial, the stress on both Keane’s defense and his private life begins to mount, especially when Anna Paradine’s behavior suggests that she’s kept a lot hidden from him . . .
For an Alfred Hitchcock film, The Paradine Case is surprisingly unexciting and unmemorable. Those are words not often associated with the Master of Suspense, whose movies normally are a guarantee of entertainment. Paradine has interesting characters, particularly the couple played by Charles Laughton and Ethel Barrymore, but the story, to put it mildly, suffers from a lack of development. All too often, it simply seems as if nothing is happening. Considerable time is used to establish Laughton as a harassing lecher who plagues Ann Todd and humiliates his own wife, but that thread never meshes with the rest of the plot. Yes, the Judge may be prejudiced against Keane going into the trial, but the disadvantage doesn’t seem relevant, considering that Keane never offers a reasonable case anyway. Joan Tetzel, the daughter of the Paradine family lawyer played by Charles Coburn, exists only to tell Anthony and Gay how they are feeling, and to deliver unnecessary exposition during the trial: “I’m afraid your husband’s not doing well.”
Somewhere in the middle of the war, tied up with his new lover/muse and his messy divorce, David O. Selznick seemingly misplaced much of his good instincts for movie material. The only lesson he learned from Gone With the Wind is that his judgment should override that of everyone else. No matter what their experience or specialty might be, the expensive experts hired by Selznick were informed almost daily, in multi-page memos, how to to their jobs. He also decided that he was a good writer. Since You Went Away and Duel in the Sun have plenty of entertainment value, but Selznick’s screenplays show no sense of economy, and tend to simply graft together ideas from other movies. Duel in the Sun is a hot romance surrounded by cornball, overdone western situations. Since You Went Away) simply appropriates the Monty Wooley character from The Man Who Came to Dinner.
The Paradine screenplay ‘personally’ authored by David O. is unusually awkward, even for him. There’s little motivation for Keane’s abrupt tailspin into bewitchment by Valli, and little attempt to make us identify with his predicament — it seems as if we’re supposed to be mesmerized by Anna Paradine just as Keane is, but nothing of the sort ever happens. We never trust Valli’s character. We don’t understand why potential murder suspects in the Paradine household weren’t investigated by Keane (or the cops) from the start. Keane accepts Maddalena’s innocence with the illogical reason that “anyone can see a woman of her quality couldn’t do anything like that.” We never hear much of the police case against Anna, so we never know exactly what Keane is up against. If Selznick had set the story fifty years earlier, it might seem more credible. The low-key approach starts events well, but since the whole show appears to be in denial about Anna Paradine’s obvious guilt, what should be big surprises at the finish turn out to to be news only to the badly shaken Anthony Keane.
The acting is uniformly fine for a film where characters are well defined but do not develop. Perhaps Ann Todd could have been one of Hitchcock’s ‘blondes’ had she not been given such a dull role. Her understanding, suffering wife act is well played but nothing more. Alida Valli, the Selznick ‘find’ who would go on to fame in The Third Man and Eyes Without a Face apparently enraptures Keane by mental telepathy. Despite her stunning looks, there’s no chemistry whatsoever between her and Gregory Peck. She’s a good case for the axiom that Hitch only related to blondes in his movies.
Selznick believed that pairing attractive stars guaranteed success. He couldn’t lose with Ingrid Bergman, who made all of her co-stars seem like great film lovers. Detractors would say that neither Todd nor Valli create viable chemistry with Gregory Peck, and the movie never takes off for viewers. Valli ended up being one of those postwar imports, like Viveca Lindfors, who were misused by the Hollywood ‘geniuses’ that signed them to restrictive contracts. It’s pretty amazing to see Alida Valli in one of her lively, motivated pre-Selznick pictures, and then to see how Paradine tries to mold her into a Garbo-like woman of mystery.
Lee Garmes pulls off a few understated camera tricks, most notably some smooth tracking shots in the courtroom, one of which is a clever rear-projection. But in general Paradine is almost devoid of Hitchcock touches. There’s hardly a nervous moment or even a narrative surprise. It really seems as if the director was marking time with the movie, fulfilling his contract and getting it all over with as quickly as possible. The closest he seems to come to involvement is in the scenes with Laughton. Unless one takes the story as a treatise on the general persecution of women, the Laughton sidebar is almost irrelevant.
