Stage Fright (film)

Independent Films, Film Profiles

Stage Fright (1950) is an Alfred Hitchcock crime film starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, and Richard Todd. Others in the cast include Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Kay Walsh, Hitchcock's daughter Patricia Hitchcock in her movie debut, and Joyce Grenfell in a humorous vignette.Produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the story was adapted for the screen by Whitfield Cook, Ranald MacDougall, and Alma Reville (the director's wife), with additional dialogue by James Bridie, based on the novel Man Running by Selwyn Jepson.Though Hitchcock had lived and worked in Hollywood since 1939, this mystery/thriller, which is mixed with humor, was filmed on location in London. The only members of the cast who are not British are the two top billed stars, Wyman and Dietrich.Featured is an original Cole Porter song, The Laziest Gal In Town performed by Dietrich in a sultry fashion. Costumes were designed by Christian Dior.Stage Fright garnered some adverse publicity upon its initial release due to the "lying flashback" which is seen at the beginning of the film. However, some film critics, including those of Cahiers du Cinema, see the flashback as simply being an illustration of one person's version of the events: the events as recounted by the character whose voice-over we hear, which was presumably Hitchcock's intention.The film has a few extra-long takes, reminiscent of those that Hitchcock used in Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).