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Stage Fright is one of the less memorable Hitchcock films, and for good reason. Much of Stage Fright is fitfully dull, lacking in droll humor and never quite becoming the sum of its parts. There might have been a good thriller in here somewhere, but the film is given a disservice by numerous problems including the false flashback. While an interesting concept, it leaves a bad taste in the viewer’s mouth for having been so strongly deceived from the start and given a false impression. It’s been built around a shoddy excuse for a filmic device, one more intriguing to film school academia than anything else.
The plot mechanics are retold endlessly instead of anything new or interesting happening in way of the plot. We’re told and retold endlessly who probably killed who, and a probable motive, and that our intrepid heroine is going undercover to try and get information to clear her crush’s name, etc. It operates in fits and starts and is a frightful bore for much of the film. There’s never an instant where we feel that Eve is in any real danger, that any real threat could possibly befall her.
Another problem is the stiff and wooden acting from all of the male leads. None of them do any interesting or exciting work. They all pale in comparison to James Stewart in Vertigo or Laurence Olivier in Rebecca or Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train. But his two female leads deliver fine work. Jane Wyman has the trickier role as Eve than Marlene Dietrich does as the femme fatale. Wyman must portray several different kinds of women: a reporter, a struggling actress, a detective, and a cockney maid. She does fine work in each and every incarnation and has some surprisingly funny and memorable moments. I personally loved when she was trying to design a look for her cockney maid and try it out on her mother, but her mother sees right through it instantly. Wyman’s face is priceless. Dietrich though is the real treasure, which has to do with a combination of her droll bitchery and incredible star magnetism. Her performance of “The Laziest Gal in Town” seems beamed in from another movie, but she nails one of the film’s few intense sequences when a little boy is walking up to her performing “La Vie en Rose” with a doll containing a stain identical to her blood stained dress from earlier. It’s a wonder that Hitchcock didn’t work with her more since she so clearly possessed the kind of ice-queen blonde looks he loved so much.
