Stage Fright (1950)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Jane Wyman, Michael Wilding, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Todd, Alastair Sim, Kay Walsh, Sybil Thorndike, Hector MacGregor, Miles Malleson, André Morell, Ballard Berkeley, Joyce Grenfell.

Aspiring actress Wyman gets plunged into a noir-ish mystery when she tries to help a friend (Todd) who may have been framed for the murder of the fashionable society husband of singer Dietrich (also Todd’s lover). A few exciting and stylish moments, and a number of the Master’s familiar touchstones, but it just doesn’t hang together; hardly a whiff of sustained anxiety, and it’s not much of a mystery either. Tighter editing would have helped, as even the more amusing and gripping episodes have a tendency to peter out instead of deliver a curt thrill or punchline. Wyman and Wildling make for a banal romantic pairing; supporting work from Sim and Walsh (as, respectively, Wyman’s churlish father and a maid with blackmail on her mind) provides a little color. Rambling and forgettable, but not entirely devoid of worth; more like imitation Hitchcock than the real deal.

54/100