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Out of all the Hitchcock's I have yet to see, this was the one I most wanted to, if only for Salvador Dali's involvement (I'm a fan of his work, somewhat). Unfortunately, like Suspicion before it, this turned out to be a disappointment. It tries hard, but it's too talky, slightly melodramatic and could do with a considerable cut down in length, even if it is only about 110 minutes. On the plus side I think it has probably the best non-Herrmann score, from the Hitchcock's I've seen at least - I'm not overly familiar with Miklós Rózsa's work. There's a lot of innovative technical work too, typical of a Hitchcock film (the red flash when the gun is fired is genius ; I'm not sure if that was hand painted like the flag in Battleship Potemkin.) And of course, Dali's dream sequence which is by far the highlight of the film for me. Here's an interesting tidbit from the Hitchcock/Truffaut book :
"Dali had some strange ideas ; he wanted a statue to crack like a shell falling apart, with ants crawling all over it, and underneath, there would be Ingrid Bergman, covered by the ants!"
Quite ambitious! Truffaut goes on to say that he feels Gregory Peck is not the typical Hitchcock leading man and, whilst he doesn't have to be the typical Hitchcock leading man, I agree that something is lacking in his performance. Not "robotic" as Truffaut bluntly puts it, but slightly underwhelming for a talent man such as himself. Bergman is,well, Ingrid Bergman - beautiful, captivating and all the rest, not to mention a hell of an actress. Rhonda Fleming makes quite an impression in her brief appearance early on in the film as a sexy, man-hating, violent, mental, well, bitch. And of course there's Hitchcock regular Leo G. Carroll in a much more substantial part and Norman Lloyd, the villain from Saboteur!
For me, this is middle-of-the road Hitch fare. I won't list my rankings, but out of the 29 films I've seen from the great man, this is sitting comfortably at number 23.
