Review of The Trouble with Harry (1955) by Robert H — 06 Aug 2015

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY is probably the most atypical Hitchcock film I've seen so far. While it does have a brilliantly macabre sense of humor, the overall story is less than the sum of its parts. The basic story is that Harry is found dead in the woods, and a small group of people have trouble deciding what to do with his body.

What the film does well is mining humor from the various situations arising from finding a dead body. Given that the subject matter is kind of grotesque, this results in more chuckles than outright guffaws.

Fortunately, I thought the characters were also interesting, if a little underwritten. Shirley MacLaine did well in her first big screen role, and Edmund Gwynn (Kris Kringle in MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET) was also rather entertaining to watch.

I also thought that the tonal shifts, while a little odd at first, gave the film a quirky air that I grew to like. An example of how this plays out is in conversations that originally revolve around Harry, but then rather cavalierly shift to other, more banal, romantic comedy territory.

If James Stewart and Grace Kelly coming together over a potential murder in REAR WINDOW was weird, two couples doing the same thing over a dead body for essentially the entire film here was downright odd.

Ultimately, though, where the narrative ends up isn't as interesting as the journey taken to get there, and is a little underwhelming as a result. This isn't one of Hitchcock's greatest films, but it did provide a refreshing change of pace.