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HugeReviews.com
Reviews:
The
Trouble With Harry
by
Elizabeth Gray
Super
The
Trouble With Harry is that Harry is a corpse that has dropped into the lives of some
residents of an idyllic but sleepy little
town. Everyone thinks that they accidentally killed the man who is
lying in their beautiful country meadow;
they each have their own reasons to think
so. And
the real problem is that no one knows what
to do with him.
After
burying the man to hide the evidence, and
digging him up three times for various
reasons, love blooms between the two elderly
residents of the town who have been smitten
with each other for quite some time, and a
young couple meet, fall in love, and become
engaged.
The
country doctor finally stumbles on the dead
man, and says that the body must be
examined.
When the residents find out that
Harry died of natural causes they happily
bury him again and continue with their quiet
little lives.
To
the average person this theme does not seem
appropriate for a comedy.
But Alfred Hitchcock is not the
average person.
And he is not the average director.
In many of Hitchcock's movies he
makes the ordinary seem sinister.
With the use of camera angles,
shadows, space, and timing, techniques he
learned under German filmmaker Murnau, he
can make an average-looking motel look like
a deathtrap, as in Psycho, and an
apartment building across the street look
like an ominous setting for a murder, as in Rear
Window.
In
The Trouble With Harry he does the
opposite.
He takes a morbid situation, and by
putting it in a serene rural setting and
having the characters act inappropriately to
the situation, he creates a comedy that
allows the audience to laugh, rather than
sit in horror and suspense as his audiences
normally do.
When
the movie begins it is a young child (played
by Jerry Mathers, Leave it to Beaver) who
first finds the body.
As the child runs off to get help the
audience is led to believe that this movie
will be another whodunit suspense mystery
movie. But it is when the second character comes upon the body that
the mood starts to change.
An old man (played by British actor
Edmund Gwenn), who is out practising
shooting with his rifle, thinks that he
accidentally killed the man. In a panic, he is about to drag the body off by the legs into
the bushes when a neighbour woman (played by
Mildred Natwick) happens by, and asks what
he is doing. The audience thinks that she
will act horrified by the situation and
panic, but instead, she acknowledges the
body, and then turns the conversation to the
old man's health, and she invites him over
for tea and muffins later in the day.
It is the civility and gentility of
their conversation that makes the audience
realize that this is not going to be a
suspense thriller.
With
each passing character that finds the body,
the comedy starts to grow.
When the young boy brings his mother
(played by a young Shirley MacLaine) to look
at the body, the audience discovers that she
was married to the deceased man for a few
days, and is not unhappy that he is dead.
Another character happens by, and,
noticing the man's brand new shoes, takes
them off the body and puts them on his own
feet. And another character, engrossed in a
book he is reading out loud, stumbles on the
body three times, and without noticing, gets
up, and keeps walking without taking his
eyes off the book or losing his place.
It
is not only the way the characters treat the
body that creates the humor. It is also the
way Hitchcock treats the body through camera
angles.
By only showing sections of the body,
the audience starts to think of it as a
thing rather than a person. When the child
looks down at the body, the audience sees
the face of the man upside down. For the
rest of the movie, the only time the man's
face is seen again is in an artist's sketch.
The rest of the time the camera stays
on his legs and feet, particularly the
bottoms of his feet, as he is lying on the
ground.
In the scene when the body is about
to be examined, the feet are seen sticking
out of the bathtub. When the man is buried
it is always his feet that are sticking out.
There
are also priceless moments of genious in
this movie. When an artist (played by John Forsythe) happens through the
meadow with his sketch pad looking for
inspiration, he sits on a stump and begins
to draw the scene in front of him.
It is not until he draws the body
into his scene, and looks at it on paper,
that he realizes that it is there.
In
another scene it is revealed that Forsythe
has been trying to sell his paintings at a
roadside stand outside a country store for a
number of months. He is starting to give up
hope that he will ever get recognition as an
artist.
It is when he is busy and inspired
working on another project – making the
neighbour woman look beautiful for her
gentleman caller – that a limousine drives
up and a wealthy old gentleman gets out to
look at the paintings.
When Forsythe comes out to the stand
to get the scissors to cut the woman's hair,
the old man starts to ask how he can
purchase the paintings.
Forsythe brushes by him and goes back
into the store to work on his masterpiece.
The old man shrugs, gets back in the
limousine, and drives away.
When
the grocery store owner holds up one of the
paintings and says how much she admires it,
Forsythe reveals that she is holding it
upside down.
Each
of these scenes makes a timeless statement
about the life of an artist.
Hitchcock is always making subtle
comments about life in his movies that the
audience has to watch closely to see.
And The Trouble With Harry is
no exception.
If you watch closely you will see
Hitchcock make his fleeting appearance, as
he does in many of his movies, walking by
the roadside stand as the old man looks at
the paintings.
This
1955 black comedy is based on the book
written by Jack Trevor Story, and is
scripted by John Michael Hayes.
Hitchcock bought the rights to the
book anonymously for $11,000.
The
Trouble With Harry is a comedy gem among Hitchcock's many suspense thrillers with excellent
performances from all the cast, including
Harry (played by American actor Philip Truex).
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