Friday, January 19, 2024

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950) with Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding and Richard Todd

By David in TN
friday, january 19, 2024 at 5:55:00 p.m. est

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950) with Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding and Richard Todd. Pat Hitchcock, Alfred’s daughter, makes her film debut.

Stage Fright is a British thriller, Hitchcock’s return to British cinema after several years in Hollywood. It’s considered one of his more underrated films.

N.S. Hitchcock? The name sounds vaguely familiar, but not, apparently, to Red Eddie. I believe he aired Hitchcock’s last silent, The Lodger, which was loosely about Jack the Ripper, though some have claimed that Hitchcock was forced into a cop-out ending, in which the protagonist is transformed from the killer, or at least a morally ambiguous figure, into a good guy.

Let’s see: If Red Eddie was serious about crime movies, once a month, he could screen a Hitchcock classic or masterpiece. The Man Who Knew too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1936), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew too Much (the re-make) (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). Of course, that would make the contrast to his usual fare all the more pronounced.



1 comment:

David In TN said...

TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 and 10 a.m. ET is Michael Gordon's Woman in Hiding (1949) with Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, Stephen McNally, Peggy Dow, John Litel.

Film Noir Guide: "Lupino stars as a newlywed whose husband (McNally) is trying to kill her so he can inherit the mill once owned by her rich father (Litel), whom he has already murdered. While fleeing town, Lupino loses control of her car, thanks to McNally's brake-tampering job, and it plunges into a creek. She escapes death but realizes that the police will not believe her story so she must 'stay dead' until she finds McNally's girlfriend (Dow), who she thinks will back up her claim that McNally is trying to kill her."

David In TN: I have never seen this one. This is the first showing by TCM. In last week's outro for Stage Fright, one of Hitchcock's underwhelming films, Red Eddie Muller said in effect, "Don't blame me if you didn't like it."