‘Harry’ a subtle pleasure in Hitchcock collection

loading...

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes, 100 minutes, not rated. Show tonight only, weather permitting, Pickering Square, downtown Bangor, sundown. Lawn chairs advised. Free.

The fourth film in the River City Cinema Society’s Smiles on a Summer Night series is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 movie “The Trouble with Harry,” a sly, subtle black comedy in the British vein that’s laced with sexual innuendoes, an enthusiastic skewering of Puritanism and fringe New Englander characters that resist caricature.

Many will appreciate that, particularly after the recent HBO movie “Empire Falls” disappointed by trotting out its share of them.

As written by former longtime Winter Harbor summer resident John Michael Hayes, screenwriter for “Peyton Place” and “Butterfield 8” as well as several of Hitchcock’s best films – “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much” – the movie finds Hitchcock experimenting with comedy, turning it on its side as he did with suspense, infusing it with his dark sense of humor, twisting it into something unique and unexpected.

As such, “Harry” is an absurdist’s dream, with a few nice laughs and good performances tucked within a screwy story about a bothersome corpse named Harry who can’t seem to stay buried and whose death could be attributed to any number of people.

When we first see him, Harry is lying stiff in a Vermont field, toes pointed toward the heavens, perhaps dead from malicious means, perhaps not. His body allows for a series of misunderstandings to unspool, with John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn, Jerry Mathers, Mildred Natwick and Mildred Dunnock all playing characters who factor into the mystery. Who is responsible for Harry’s death? That’s part of the trouble here – not that any of these chilly people are particularly moved by his death.

Of the film, Hayes once said that “Hitchcock wanted to do the movie just for fun, for relief from what he was doing regularly.” Hitchcock himself noted that the film was “an expensive self-indulgence, though it went over quite well whenever it reached an audience.”

Essentially, that’s the director’s tongue-in-cheek way of saying that it didn’t really connect at all – the movie bombed in the States and in England (Paramount refused to push it), with Paris alone serving as its most enthusiastic supporter. There, the movie ran an astonishing six months to sold-out shows.

While it’s true that “Harry” isn’t the best of the Hitchcock lot and that nobody should come to it expecting raucous laughs – you won’t find them here – it’s also true that like all of Hitchcock’s films, it has its indelible moments.

Among them are the unforgettable scenes in which Jerry Mathers (“Leave it to Beaver”) finds his favorite toy in a dead rabbit, and also there’s the bonus of seeing MacLaine in her first feature role. This isn’t the brassy MacLaine we’ve come to know over the years – she was just 20 here, still an ingenue. Still, watching her spar with Forsythe, who would go on to star in the television series “Dynasty,” allows for flashes of the robust actress MacLaine would become.

A note about last Friday’s show: “Weather permitting” is an unwanted but necessary caveat, as anyone who turned out for “His Girl Friday” undoubtedly found out. Instead of seeing that movie, what they got instead was storms on a summer night. The event was washed out, with a rain date for that movie set for Aug. 19. Tonight, the series takes a sharp left turn into another form of comedy. Or at least it will, weather permitting.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER, written and directed by Mike Binder, 116 minutes, rated R.

The downside of a drunk, with Joan Allen on a bender. Here, Allen plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a disillusioned, middle-aged woman slapped with the unexpected ugliness of having to face herself when her husband dumps her for that old clich?, his younger secretary.

Consumed by betrayal, bewilderment and rage – mostly rage – Terry doesn’t turn to her family for solace or insight. Instead, she goes straight for those other clich?s – bitterness and the bottle.

The film is a tour-de-force for Allen, whose sometimes cruelly funny performance lifts an otherwise rote story out of the ordinary.

For Terry’s rage, Binder offers up several sacrificial lambs, beginning with her daughters (Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Keri Russel, Evan Rachel Wood) and extending to Terry’s neighbor Denny (Kevin Costner), a once-great baseball star whose retirement from the game has been spent drinking too much beer and slumming daily through a radio talk show he’d like to quit.

Denny is an alcoholic, single and not loving it, and so, when he hears that Terry’s husband has ditched her, he naturally decides to pursue a relationship with her. She is, after all, rather sexy and smart when she’s not half in the bag. Perhaps he has the goods to save her, maybe even himself.

Good luck to Denny.

Dysfunction is a bull that runs rampant through the movie, which gives it energy. The film is riddled with neuroses – it’s a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, and in one hilarious scene, the most spectacular of horror shows.

And yet the movie, in spite of its soapy underpinnings and a disappointing final twist, doesn’t implode. You’re never bored watching it, which is a testament to the cast, to the sharp dialogue and to Binder himself, who turns up as a sleazy radio show producer who beds one of Terry’s far younger daughters – and nearly steals the show.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, Weekends in Television, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? BDN film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Alexander – C

Assault on Precinct 13 – C+

The Aviator – A

Bad Education – A

Birth – B+

Boogeyman – D

Bride & Prejudice – B

Coach Carter – B-

The Chorus – A-

Collateral – B+

Constantine – C-

Cursed – C-

Darkness – D+

A Dirty Shame – B

Elektra – C-

Ella Enchanted – B

Flight Of The Phoenix – C-

Guess Who – C+

Hide and Seek – C

Hostage – C-

House of Flying Daggers – A

Ice Princess – B-

The Incredibles – A

In Good Company – B+

King Arthur – B

Kinsey – A

Ladder 49 – B

The Life Aquatic – D+

Man of the House – C-

Maria Full Of Grace – A

Meet the Fockers – C

Million Dollar Baby – A

Miss Congeniality 2 – C+

Napoleon Dynamite – B+

National Treasure – C-

The Notebook – B+

Ocean’s Twelve – C-

The Pacifier – D+

Prozac Nation – C

Ray – A

State Property 2 – D

The Sea Inside – A-

Taxi – D+

Team America – B-

Upside of Anger – B

Vintage Mickey – B+

XXX: State of the Union – B