STAGE FRIGHT

US, 1950, 110 minutes, Black and White.
Marlene Dietrich, Jane Wyman, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Stage Fright is not considered one of Alfred Hitchcock's great films. However, it is highly entertaining in a theatrical way - a theatre story with acting, performance - and deception. Some critics were hostile to the film because in one of the flashbacks the character played by Richard Todd actually tells a lie and the false scene is played out before the audience's eyes. Some considered that this was cheating. However, this was a perspective of the early '50s - and perhaps anticipated some of the more complex thrillers of the later decades.

Marlene Dietrich is effective as always in a central role, contrasting with the frumpy-seeming Jane Wyman. Richard Todd was at the beginning of his career. He was soon to become an action hero in war films as well as Disney's Robin Hood and starring in The Sword and the Rose. Michael Wilding had appeared for Hitchcock previously in the Australian saga, Under Capricorn. Stage Fright came after such classics as Rope and was made just before another classic, Strangers on a Train as well as I Confess. Hitchcock was on the verge, at this stage, of beginning his glossy Hollywood films with Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.

1. A good Hitchcock film? Audience response to Alfred Hitchcock's reputation? What are audience expectations from a Hitchcock film? Were they fulfilled here? How well?

2 Was this a successful thriller? The creation of a thriller atmosphere? Excitement?

3. The film had many comic touches. How enjoyable was the comedy? Why? How well did it blend with the excitement?

4. Comment on the structure of the film for audience involvement. The nature of Johnny's flash-backs? Were they fair? The fact that Johnny told a lie and this was visualised? Did this trick the audience too much? Play on their sympathies and antipathies?

5. How did the film focus on Johnny? Did audiences have sympathy with him? Sympathise with his hiding, want Eve to help him, respond to his style as a gentleman? Did audiences change in their view towards him? When did it appear that he was psychotic? Was this a surprise revelation? Did it add to the atmosphere of the climax? The melodrama of his death? Was he drawn as a character? Or as a person from popular fiction? How did this alter audience response to the film as a whole?

6. How attractive a heroine was Eve? Seeing her in her acting, in helping Johnny, in loving him? Eve's relationship with her father, her mother, The importance of her becoming a maid? The skill with which she did this? Her falling in love with Smith? Her manoeuvring to keep the truth from him? His response to the truth about her? Her relationship to Marlene Dietrich? Her belief in Johnny? Her trying to trick Dietrich? Her response to the crisis and the truth about Johnny?

7. How interesting a character was Smith? The conventional gentleman, the gentleman policeman? What role did he have in the dramatics of the film? As a contrast with Johnny?

8. The contribution of Eve's father and mother to the drama of the film? Her father's eccentricity, her mother's eccentricity? How enjoyable was English comedy? As forwarding the plot?

9. How important was it that Marlene Dietrich played the femme fatale? Was there depth of character in her portrayal? The Dietrich surface? The songs and her imperious style? Her relationship to Johnny, to Smith, to Eve? To Eve as maid? Her response to the doll’s dress etc? The truth about her at the end? And audience response to this?

10. How important were different incidents in the film for its momentum: the scenes in the theatre, the doll’s dress ?

11. How well did the film benefit from such incidental comedy as Joyce Grenfell at the fair at the shooting gallery?

12. The importance of the maid? The blackmail background? A sense of tenseness for the main theme?

13. The quality of the climax and its melodrama? As fitting for this kind of film?

14. How serious a thriller was this meant to be? Was it more of a Hitchcock soufflé? How much insight into character was there? Into crime?