In London, Maddalena Anna Paradine (Alida Valli) is a very beautiful and enigmatic young Italian woman who is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband, a wealthy retired colonel. It is not clear whether she is a grateful and devoted wife who has been falsely charged or a calculating and ruthless femme fatale.
Mrs. Paradine's solicitor, Sir Simon Flaquer (Charles Coburn), hires Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck), a brilliant and successful barrister, to defend her in court. Although Keane has been happily married for eleven years, he instantly becomes deeply infatuated with his client. Keane's wife, Gay (Ann Todd), sees his obsession, and although he offers to relinquish the case, presses him to continue. She knows that a "guilty" verdict, followed by Mrs. Paradine's hanging, will mean that she will lose her husband emotionally forever. The only way that she can regain her husband's love and devotion is if he is able to obtain a "not guilty" verdict for Mrs. Paradine.
Meanwhile, Keane himself starts to focus his legal efforts on Colonel Paradine's mysterious servant, André Latour (Louis Jourdan). Keane sees Latour as a scapegoat on whom he can pin the crime of murder, but this strategy backfires. After Keane pressures Latour in court, triggering an angry outburst, word comes that Latour has killed himself. Mrs. Paradine is coldly furious that Keane has destroyed Latour, who was her lover. On the witness stand, she tells Keane that she hates him and that he has murdered the only person she loved. She goes so far as to say that she poisoned her husband in order to be with Latour.
Keane is overwhelmed. Attempting to summarize, he improvises a brief and faltering speech, admitting how poorly he has handled the case, but cannot continue speaking, and has to leave the court. He stays overnight at Sir Simon's office, feeling that his career is in ruins. Finding him there, his wife offers reconciliation and hope for the future.
Cast
Gregory Peck as Anthony Keane, counsel for the defence
It is reported that Hitchcock originally wanted Greta Garbo to play Mrs. Maddalena Anna Paradine, but she turned down the role after the screen test,[4] which allowed Alida Valli to step in for her American film debut. However Hitchcock denied this in a 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show. The Paradine Case was also the American film debut of Louis Jourdan.[5] Both Valli and Jourdan hoped that the film would give them the status in the U.S. that they enjoyed in their home countries (Italy and France, respectively), but that did not happen, though Jourdan later made many U.S. films.[6]
Production
David O. Selznick had purchased the rights to Robert Smythe Hichens' novel in 1933, before it was published, when Selznick was still at MGM, with Greta Garbo in mind to star – indeed, Garbo was Hichens' inspiration for the creation of Mrs. Paradine. Garbo did consider doing the film, but ultimately turned it down. She had decided to retire from acting.[5][7] (Garbo had also turned down I Remember Mama at about the same time, and is reputed to have said "No murderesses, no mamas".[3])
Howard Estabrook was assigned to write the script at that time, and it was announced that John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Diana Wynyard would star in the film. A draft of the script was submitted by MGM to the censors at the Hays Office, who warned that the script would likely be rejected since Mrs. Paradine was guilty of murder, adultery and perjury, and later committed suicide. They also objected to the judge being portrayed as a sadist who enjoyed sending people to their deaths. A new draft of the script was submitted, but not for some years, in 1942, and this script was approved. In 1946, another version was sent in, and this was also approved after the suicide was removed from the story.[5]
In 1946, it was announced that Alfred Hitchcock would direct the film, and that Laurence Olivier would star as the barrister,[5] but Olivier eventually turned the project down, as he was preparing for his production of Hamlet.[7] Hitchcock was interested in Ronald Colman for the part as well as Garbo (who had not yet turned down the project) or Ingrid Bergman for Mrs. Paradine. Other actors who were considered for the film include: Maurice Evans, Joseph Cotten, Alan Marshal, James Mason for Anthony Keane; Hedy Lamarr for Mrs. Paradine; Claude Rains for Lord Thomas Horfield; and Robert Newton for Mrs. Paradine's lover.[5] In the end, Hitchcock pushed for Gregory Peck, then at the peak of his box-office appeal; Ann Todd was borrowed from the Rank Organisation to play his wife; and Selznick settled on Alida Valli, considered one of the more promising actresses in the Italian cinema for Mrs. Paradine.[6]
Alfred Hitchcock and Gregory Peck in discussion on the set of The Paradine Case
The Paradine Case was the last film made under Hitchcock's seven-year contract with Selznick, as Hitchcock may have tired of the association by that time. In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said that he and his wife Alma Reville wrote the first draft of the script together, before bringing in Scottish playwright James Bridie to do some polishing, but that Selznick, dissatisfied with the result, would view the previous day's rushes, do a rewrite, and send the new scenes to the set to be shot.[5][6] According to his biographer Donald Spoto "...Hitchcock's disgust with the content and method that were forced upon him conspired to produce an uneasy atmosphere from which Hitchcock could scarcely wait to extricate himself." Gregory Peck said of the director, "He seemed really bored with the whole thing..."[8]
The film was in production from December 19, 1946, to May 7, 1947,[9] with retakes done in November of that year. Although some external shots show the Lake District in Cumbria, the rest of the footage was shot on three sets at Selznick's lot in Culver City, California, a first in Selznick's career as an independent producer.[5] Selznick reportedly spared no expense.[7] The set for the courtroom scenes exactly duplicated a courtroom in London's Old Bailey, photographed, with permission, by unit manager Fred Ahern, and built in 85 days at the cost of $80,000. Unusually, the set had ceilings to allow for low camera angles.[5]
For the courtroom sequence, Hitchcock used more than one camera, a technique which had been used in the past, but only to shoot the same subject. Here, Hitchcock used four cameras shooting simultaneously, each focused on one of the principal actors in the scene.[5] This set-up, including elaborately choreographed crane shots, allowed Hitchcock to shoot longer takes of about ten minutes, something he would push to the limit on his next two films, Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).[4]
The completed film cost an estimated $4,258,000 to make, almost as much as Gone with the Wind. Selznick maintained close supervision on the production, and interfered with Hitchcock's normally carefully budgeted process by demanding extensive re-takes. When Hitchcock insisted on receiving his contractual $1000/day fee, Selznick took over post-production, supervising the editing and the scoring of the film.[3] The producer went through eighteen different title changes for the picture before rechristening it The Paradine Case, just hours before the premiere.[10]
The Paradine Case opened December 29, 1947, in Los Angeles and in two theaters across the street from each other in Westwood, California[5] followed by its New York City premiere on January 8, 1948.[5][11][12] The film was initially 132 minutes long, Selznick having editing down Hitchcock's rough cut of almost three hours. Before general release, however, Selznick further reduced the running time to 114 minutes, which is also the current length of the DVD release. In 1980, a flood reportedly destroyed the uncut original version of the film, making a restoration unlikely.[3][bettersourceneeded]
The Paradine Case was not a box office success, worldwide receipts barely covering half of the cost of production.[6]
Hitchcock put in a cameo appearance in most of his films. In this film, he can be seen leaving the Cumberland train station, carrying a cello, at about 38 minutes.
Hitchcock described The Paradine Case as "...a love story embedded in the emotional quicksand of a murder trial".
Production credits
The production credits on the film were as follows:
Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, liked the film, the acting, and Hitchcock's direction, and wrote, "With all the skill in presentation for which both gentlemen are famed, David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock have put upon the screen a slick piece of static entertainment in their garrulous The Paradine Case... Gregory Peck is impressively impassioned as the famous young London barrister who lets his heart, cruelly captured by his client, rule his head. And Ann Todd, the pliant British actress, is attractively anguished as his wife. Alida Valli, an import from Italy, makes the caged Mrs. Paradine a compound of mystery, fascination and voluptuousness with a pair of bedroom eyes, and Louis Jourdan, a new boy from Paris, is electric as the badgered valet."[13]
Variety wrote, "high dramatics...Hitchcock's penchant for suspense and unusual atmosphere development get full play. There is a deliberateness of pace, artful pauses and other carefully calculated melodramatic hinges upon which he swings the story and players.[14]Time Out says "Bleak in its message (those who love passionately inevitably destroy the object of their desire), the movie only half works. The intricate, triangular plot is finally overburdened by the courtroom setting."[15]
Leonard Maltin said "talk, talk, talk in complicated, stagy courtroom drama;"[16]
Despite the mixed reviews the movie received, most critics noted the strong performances of Ann Todd and Joan Tetzel.
Awards and honors
Ethel Barrymore was nominated for a 1947 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as Lady Sophie Horfield.[17]
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
David O. Selznick was an American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive who produced Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940), both of which earned him an Academy Award for Best Picture. He also won the Irving Thalberg Award at the 12th Academy Awards, Hollywood's top honor for a producer, in recognition of his shepherding Gone with the Wind through a long and troubled production and into a record-breaking blockbuster.
Suspicion is a 1941 American romantic psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also features Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, and Leo G. Carroll. Suspicion is based on Francis Iles's novel Before the Fact (1932).
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Spellbound is a 1945 American psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Michael Chekhov. It follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a murderer. The film is based on the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Hilary Saint George Saunders and John Palmer.
Duel in the Sun is a 1946 American epic psychological Western film directed by King Vidor, produced and written by David O. Selznick, and starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, and Lionel Barrymore. Based on the 1944 novel of the same name by Niven Busch, it follows a young orphaned Mestiza woman who experiences prejudice and forbidden love, while residing with her white relatives on a large Texas ranch.
Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock was an English screenwriter and film editor. She was the wife of film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, and The Lady Vanishes, as well as scripts for other directors, including Henrik Galeen, Maurice Elvey, and Berthold Viertel.
Notorious is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation.
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a 1927 British silent thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June Tripp, Malcolm Keen and Ivor Novello. Hitchcock's third feature film, it was released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes and the play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes. Its plot concerns the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer in London.
Louis Jourdan was a French film and television actor. He was known for his suave roles in several Hollywood films, including Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Gigi (1958), The Best of Everything (1959), The V.I.P.s (1963) and Octopussy (1983). He played Dracula in the 1977 BBC television production Count Dracula.
The Pleasure Garden is a 1926 British–German silent drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in his feature film directorial debut. Based on the 1923 novel of the same name by Oliver Sandys, the film is about two chorus girls at the Pleasure Garden Theatre in London and their troubled relationships.
Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project, and his first film under contract with producer David O. Selznick. The screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison, and adaptation by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, were based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.
Dorothy Ann Todd was an English film, television and stage actress who achieved international fame when she starred in The Seventh Veil (1945). From 1949 to 1957 she was married to David Lean who directed her in The Passionate Friends (1949), Madeleine (1950), and The Sound Barrier (1952). She was a member of The Old Vic theatre company and in 1957 starred in a Broadway play. In her later years she wrote, produced and directed travel documentaries.
Saboteur is a 1942 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd.
Alida Maria Laura, Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg, better known by her stage name Alida Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films in a 70-year career, spanning from the 1930s to the early 2000s. She was one of the biggest stars of Italian film during the Fascist era, once being called "the most beautiful woman in the world" by Benito Mussolini, and was internationally successful post-World War II. According to Frédéric Mitterrand, Valli was the only actress in Europe to equal Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo.
Robert Smythe Hichens was an English journalist, novelist, music lyricist, short story writer, music critic and collaborated on successful plays. He is best remembered as a satirist of the "Naughty Nineties".
Joan Margaret Tetzel was an American actress.
Walk Softly, Stranger is a 1950 American romantic drama film starring Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli and directed by Robert Stevenson. Also regarded by some as either or both a film noir and crime film, it tells the story of a small-time crook on the run who becomes reformed by the love of a disabled woman.
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, the film is about an English tourist travelling by train in continental Europe who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, the two proceeding to search the train for clues to the old lady's disappearance.
The Paradine Case is a 1933 novel by the British writer Robert Hichens. In the novel, Colonel Paradine, V.C., a blinded war veteran of social prominence, has died of poisoning and his wife has been charged with his murder. The married London barrister who defends the accused wife becomes deeply infatuated with her.
References
1 2 David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Abacus, 1993 p 506
↑ Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times, film review, "Selznick and Hitchcock Join Forces on Paradine Case", January 8, 1948. Last accessed: January 6, 2008.
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