The late Louis Jourdan came up in conversation yesterday during a chat on ye Fycetyme with friends, which led me to remark on his, um, forceful appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, his first Hollywood film. One friend surprised me by saying he’d never seen it, so of course I will have to pour out a few thoughts now!
When people think of Alfred Hitchcock they think of Rebecca, Psycho!, Rear Window, The Birds, and all those movies he made with Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Other Blondes Wearing Nile Green. My own two favorites are from “second string'“ Hitchcock films — notable, finely crafted films with stellar performances, but just not pushing themselves to the front of the Hitchcock pack. The other is Stage Fright, but The Paradine Case comes first.
Long story short: Allida Valli (also known as Valli), while playing the piano before dinner, is arrested for murdering her husband in the very recent past. The dignity and hauteur she displays through her arrest and arraignment could not be more stimulating. Her family solicitor, delightful Charles Coburn, meets her in prison and arranges for one of the brightest stars of the bar to take on her case, Gregory Peck. After meeting Valli in prison, it doesn’t take long for Our Boy to become completely infatuated with her, a fact not missed by his loyal and loving wife, Requisite Hitchcock Blonde Ann Todd (appearing by arrangement with J. Arthur Rank Organization). Hilarity ensues (as I’m fond of saying), especially when Peck obsessively visits Valli’s country house and ends up meeting her murdered husband’s valet . . . Louis Jourdan, with eyes of coal-black fire and skin like creamy velvet. Just how will his testimony affect the trial? I’m not telling!
Ann Todd, Ethel Barrymore, and Joan Tetzel.
Along for the ride are the judge, Charles Laughton; the wife he has browbeaten into twittery, fumbling, terrified submission, Ethel Barrymore; and Charles Coburn’s unmarried daughter, sharply observant Joan Tetzel, who also happens to be Ann Todd’s best friend. And it’s a pleasure to see Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor and Isobel Elsom (best remembered as Mrs. Eynesford-Hill in My Fair Lady) as a country innkeeper who finds a dead owl in a chimney.
Valli is arraigned. Charles Coburn second from right.
There are many reasons to love this film, starting with the performances. Valli is vabulous; her performance is a gray rainbow of all the dark emotions, warm, majestic, contemptuous, despairing. This was her first Hollywood film, too, along with Jourdan, but she really spent most of her career in Europe. Jourdan, her co-debutante, displays marvelous intensity. I am especially fond of his scene at the inn with Gregory Peck, not least because of my love of double entendre.
While Peck and Laughton deliver performances up to their usual standard, I am most drawn to the women in The Paradine Case. Ethel Barrymore could not be more desperately wonderful, so deeply in love with a man whose faults she can’t help but see. But it’s really Ann Todd and Joan Tetzel who carry this picture over the threshold. Joan Tetzel fearlessly communicates unwelcome opinions to the men whether they like it or not (they usually don’t), and Ann Todd . . . oh, I just love her! Watch the movie and you’ll fall in love with her, too.
Then there are Travis Banton’s wonderful gowns. La Barrymore, dignified in grey lace, but just dowdy enough. All of Ann Todd’s ensembles (except for one of her courtroom outfits) speak of quiet good taste, and I love the way she wears a streamer on her white chiffon dinner gown in two or three different ways. Joan Tetzel looks sharps and sleep in high-necked form-fitting black, but by far and away Valli sweeps them all off the screen in the full-skirted black gown in which she’s arrested. With her high diamond earrings and Very Important diamond brooch on her bateau neck, and the contemptuous curves of her hair and features . . . wow!
Add a haunting, suspenseful score by Franz Waxman — be on the lookout for Appassionata No. 69 — and the stunning news delivered to the courtroom that changes everything, and you just can’t go wrong. Enjoy!
Charles Laughton creeping on Ann Todd after dinner.