Capo
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Post by Capo on Jul 22, 2007 21:27:36 GMT
Stage Fright Alfred Hitchcock 1950 UK A young actress decides to help out a friend who is suspected of murder by feigning the part of a newspaper journalist and the villain's maid. The title credits unfold as a stage curtain raises and reveals London; thereafter, a mastepiece of intricate performances within performances, as acting and theatricality provides the main thematic thread, and a murder mystery providing the adequate stage for it. Every character is hiding under some sort of pretence to someone else - our heroine to everybody else, her mother, father, the villain, the suspect, the detective investigating everything. The twist ending could easily have ruined things, but doesn't, due to the stagebound denoument, the silence before it, the lighting and sweat upon the actors shot in close-up. Alistair Sim steals the show, and his efforts to win a doll by shooting a duck at a fair are hilarious.
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