Hitchcock loved macabre jokes and "The Trouble With Harry" was really nothing more than one long slightly sick anecdote......a noble attempt to transport the kind of graveyard humor that British film comedies had perfected......
But unlike the Brits, we Yanks didn't get the joke......in the l950's, death, to us,was no laughing matter. .(and we wouldn't fully embrace sicko yocks until the 1960's) So "Harry", like its title character, dropped dead in the United States, but tickled everyone's fancy in England and Europe......where gallows humor always worked. ..
Time, of course, heals not only wounds, but misunderstood movies.....and 'Harry' grew a better reputation....not as an all-time Hitchcock classic, but one of the more diverting 'entertainments' in his filmography......(Hitchcock had the last laugh, applying 'Harry'-type humor to his bookended bits at the open and close of each "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode....making the TV show an instant hit.)
What do we love about it? Let's see now.....
Autumnal Vermont.....Hitchcock's second unit crew captured some of the most stunning October scenery committed to film.... you want to hurl yourselves into the screen and live there forever.....or at least until the first snow hits....
Bernard Herrmann's score... The first film in the most legendary director-composer collaboration in movie history (eventually ending in bitter acrimony over the "Torn Curtain" score. No composer understood Hitchcock and his films like Herrmann......and he kicked off their first effort together with this puckish, sprightly and slyly funny score, which he late re-worked into a Hitchcock tribute suite...
The oddball cast.....Hitchcock introduced the cinema world to the eflin, adorable charm of young Broadway understudy Shirley MacLaine....and a star was born....you could easily believe that her romantic lead, John Forsythe would go head over heels for her instantly. In the early scenes, it's pure joy watching Forsythe's exaggerated bemusement (he carries on like snarky game show host) come up against a stone-faced Mildred Dunnock, playing a taciturn general store proprietress. And if that isn't enough for you.....what other movie features both Santa Claus and The Beaver? (Edmond Gwenn and tiny, pre-Beav Jerry Mathers)
The dead guy..... Without whom we wouldn't have a movie. Smacked with a milk bottle, hit with a shoe and possibly shot, Harry follows the unlucky path of dead guys in dark comedies....doomed to burial, exhumation, reburial...and popping up at the most inappropriate moments. ....
Royal Dano A hearty BQ shout-out to this under appreciated prolific character actor, stuck playing the clueless town constable, the closest thing this movie has to a villain. The subtle change in his expressions as Forsythe wittily thwarts him in his suspicious snooping..... a wonderful little moment in a film filled with them....
Yes, we know that no recognizable human beings behave and speak like the dryly humorous crew of "The Trouble Of Harry", but we don't care. The movie is Hitchcock's personal New England gift shop snow globe.....except this globe's universe stays forever in golden Autumn....so we give 4 bright orange and red stars (****)......and don't trip over Harry while you stroll in the meadow.....
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