Stage Fright is quite simply one of the greatest films made by one of the English languages greatest directors. It's rather poor reception and reputation is unfortunate, yet, highly understandable. The film itself plays with a number of time honored devices used in the construction of narrative film. Most radically it leads our sense of our "sacred" flashback in question and has in its two leading actresses one of the most thorough disections of gender in any film made in the commercial American cinema. Quite simply we really never know what our intended position vis-a-vis Eve (Jane Wyman) or Charolette (Marlene Dietrich) should be. They are both actresses (one a grand lady of the stage and the other a student) and their vocation is tied to their gender in remarkable and disturbing ways. This may be the film, in which, Hitchcock enlists the greatest number of brilliant performances from his actors - including a hypnotically powerful performance by Alisair Sim as Eve's father, and good work by Richard Todd, Sybil Thorndike and Michael Wilding. Even the minor roles are well performed- consider Kay Walsh as the maid Nellie Good who has only a few scenes in the film, but manages to develop a remarkably complex character. The film plays such tricks on us and has such high demands on the audience in terms of character identification that it isn't really surprising that so many folks find the film flawed. It does seem nonesensical to call a narrative with this many twists and turns dull. I can't think of a more suspenseful and excitingly disturbing Hollywood film.
Review of Stage Fright
