This tends not to be regarded among top flight Hitchcock - I've never been sure why. Maybe because James Stewart is so patently miscast in a role needing Cary Grant or James Mason. Maybe it's regarded as "film theatre" even though it improves mightily on Patrick Hamilton's already excellent source material - and it is cinematic too, using close ups of the rope, the chest, the various people talking.
It's a brilliant screenplay. It starts with a bang - a murder - and proceeds at a fine pace. The two killers, Brandon and Philip, are very definiable and different. The supporting characters too - which no one remembers - are easy to understand: the dopey guy who was in love with the dead man's girlfriend, the dead man's girlfriend, a nattering woman, the dead man's father, the house keeper. Most of all there's Rupert, the superior intellectual whose words and attitudes are thrown back at him by the killers.
The build up of tension is done extremely well as Rupert slowly figures it out, clocking the interactions at the party. The killers almost get away with it right up until the end. The homosexual subtext - is it that, or more subtle depictions of gay characters (the two guys live together, are clearly a couple) - is completely appropriate for the story: two people living in a hidden world, turning their exclusion into superiority. I suppose there are some overly convenient things, like Brandon letting Rupert come back up and Brandon giving away his gun. And some speeches are preachy. But this is a knockout.
No comments:
Post a Comment