The Trouble with Harry

Hitchcock's strangest film, and a black comedy rather than a thriller. Autumn in Vermont. A dead man is found on a hillside; his name is Harry. Then several people from the town find him in turn, and each of them concludes they are responsible for his death. The body is buried, dug up, buried again, and this happens several times. Nobody is especially agitated. All of the humour is in that calm: Harry is a problem, but not a more urgent problem than anything else in anyone's life, and on the same day there is also a marriage proposal and a picture sold. Shirley MacLaine plays Jennifer in her first film, John Forsythe the painter and Edmund Gwenn the retired captain. It is Bernard Herrmann's first collaboration with Hitchcock. The autumn colour is a character in itself; it was shot on location in Vermont. A pleasant discovery for anyone who likes Hitchcock outside suspense and English black humour. For a viewer expecting a thriller it never accelerates, which is exactly why it failed in America at the time.