Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Fresh and Exciting

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Oh, Franz Waxman gets on my nerves. He just doesn't know when to quit! He wrote the start of a nice theme for The Paradine Case, but then his composition went crazy. Wall-to-wall music in every scene, notes constantly zigzagging up and down scales for no reason, and orchestrations that seem to want to drive the listener insane—Unfortunately, Franz Waxman's score was only the first of many problems with this movie.Fresh off his success in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, Gregory Peck reunited with his director to play a British barrister hired to defend an accused murderess, but finds himself falling in love with her. Well, Greg was only 31 years old in 1947, so in order to convince the audience that he had decades of fantastic Atticus-Finch-esque experience in the courtroom, he was given extremely fake looking and distracting white shocks of hair near his temples. It was just as effective convincing the audience he was old as his unreliable accent convinced people he was British. I love Greg, but he just can't do accents very well.Despite all-star supporting cast of Charles Coburn, Charles Laughton, Ann Todd, Ethel Barrymore, Leo G. Carroll, and Louis Jourdan in his first American film, the movie was incredibly boring and redundant. I can't count how many times a character had reached his or her point in a monologue but kept talking for another three minutes anyway. It was obvious that either producer David O'Selznick or Alfred Hitchcock wanted Ingrid Bergman to play the accused murderess, but she must have been busy. They cast Valli, also in her first American film. She tried to come across as alluring and seductive, but really, the one expression she wore during the entire film was one of a model's pose. The entire time, she seemed to be silently asking, "Have you drawn my eyebrows on yet? Can I move?" The story is flat, the characters are annoying, the direction is slow, the music is infuriating, and the acting leaves much to be desired. Unless you love Louis Jourdan and want to see him with curly hair, save yourself two hours. Watch Spellbound and To Kill a Mockingbird for your Hitchcock and Gregory Peck lawyer fixes.

This is actually one of Hitchcock's psychologically most interesting films, since there is so much going on that we know nothing about and only can guess at, as it is merely hinted at and given glimpses of, like shreds of the top of an iceberg, while the real drama goes on within the characters invisibly and out of stage. The actual drama has occurred before the film starts, and we are tossed immediately into the arrest of the mysterious lady, who carries around more knowledge and experience than what is good for anyone, least of all for her lawyer Gregory Peck, who immediately falls under her spell. We are not even informed on what grounds she is arrested, and it seems she is locked up only on suspicion - no fingerprints, no evidence, no eye-witness, nothing at all'but circumstantial fishiness.It all circles around her, her fascinating character who leaves no one unaffected, even Gregory Peck's wife (Ann Todd) is fixed on her and wants her to get away whether guilty or not. She has a burden of experience as brought out from the slums of Naples and has had an uncounted number of lovers before she finds herself the task of becoming a blind old man's eyes. What she didn't bargain for was his valet.It was Louis Jourdan's first film, and his character is almost as fascinating as Alida Valli's. At first you never even see his face, as he stays in the shadow when answering the door. He adds some extra tons of intrigue to the story, and the scenes where Gregory Peck investigates the scene of the crime with him hovering about and absconding him is central to the post mortem drama.The main question which appears as the drama is brought to an end and all the facts have become known is, can we really blame her? She had no calculating motives in marrying the old blind colonel, she really wanted to serve as his eyes and get a good life of comfort and luxury into the bargain, but then he happened to have such a young and beautiful valet. Of course such a woman must fall in love with him and start seeing the discrepancy between him and her old blind husband. Of course she would start dreaming about possibilities. Or else she would not have been a real woman.The only one in the end who sympathizes with her is Charles Laughton's besotted wife Ethel Barrymore, who makes a pathetic character, but she is actually the only good one. Gregory Peck has torn Louis Jourdan to shreds and destroyed his life, in the bargain he has ruined the case for Alida Valli, and Charles Laughton as the judge sees it all and laughs at it with gleeful cynicism, as if he found it the merrier the lousier characters he got to expose themselves. Charles Coburn observes the alarming peril of Gregory Peck's course of an aggressive defense but doesn't reach him to warn him.In the end the real tragedy is that Alida Valli has killed for love and is punished for it, but she doesn't care and almost gladly accepts her punishment, since her real punishment was to lose her love as her lawyer in his love for her tore her love to pieces in defending her - and ruined himself into the bargain.It's actually a passion play of high emotions towering above and beyond the grasp of the actors, who are all defeated victims in the end, as the one innocent and honest participant rather killed himself than accepted being accused of dishonesty. This is a mess of passion and intrigue that never really can be fully fathomed.

Astonishing to read the criticisms this spellbinding narrative has attracted on this website. Selznick and Hitchcock couldn't get along ? Gregory Peck wanted to destroy this film ? It's talky ? These opinions, even if halfway true, are completely irrelevant, because of the film's compelling excellence I found it to be enthralling, fascinating and riveting from beginning to end. Gregory Peck is indeed often wooden in his other films. Not here. I consider this to be one of his very best performances: sensitive, engaging and totally convincing. All the performances are outstanding. The entire drama is superbly written and crafted. I was mesmerized, and followed the entire proceedings with rapt attention.Although most of this movie takes place in a courtroom exactly duplicating, at enormous expense, a courtroom in the Old Bailey, and purports to be a courtroom scenario, it is really an extremely complex three-cornered analysis of monogamous marriage, an ancient institution now in its early stages of disintegration. This analysis is of a geometric character, and it's small wonder that a chess set is featured, in an abandoned game between the two main observers of the unravelling drama. Three marriages are being dissected: firstly the miserable union between the sadistic, bullying judge played by Charles Laughton, and his put- upon, long-suffering wife, Ethel Barrymore; secondly the totally amoral wife, Baroness Alida Valli, more Austrian than Italian, with a murky past, and her murdered husband Colonel Paradine; and thirdly the susceptible barrister Gregory Peck and his faithful and adoring wife, Ann Todd. That's just the beginning. Several cast members have roaming eyes, and the judge also has wandering hands, setting up hostility between him and the barrister, who is infatuated by his patently guilty client, causing him to lose judgement and objectivity. The client herself evidently pants recklessly for her husband's valet, and it is suggested that the valet has a suppressed passion for his murdered master. I had to revisit the film in order to check up on this. It seems as though the valet was possibly bi-sexual, almost Wildean therefore, but had succumbed to the seductive mistress of the house. Since the book was penned by the scandalously successful, and prolific, turn of the 19th century author, Robert Hichens, any interpretation is possible.Watching this film a second time I was even more transfixed than before. It was supremely skilfully directed. Valli's self-inspection, both before and during her arrest, has been mentioned. Equally revealing is the manner of her entry into the courtroom at her trial. The verbal exchanges between Peck, Laughton, Leo Carroll, Jourdan and herself, during the trial, are intensely and continually absorbing. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the nature of passion, integrity, motivation and truth, can surely not fail to find the screenplay remarkably intriguing and perceptive. As mentioned, this must be Peck's most moving role, as he realizes the nature of his self-deception. Apparently, the singular merits of this production have yet to be generally discovered. Most people have no opinion at all, but simply adopt the opinions of others.

There are quite a few things wrong with this minor Hitchcock work. First off, casting Gregory Peck was a huge misfire. Seeing him try to pull off being an English barrister is kinda painful. It just doesn't work. This was a role before Peck became a superstar so maybe he was just getting his bearings as an actor.It doesn't help that the major issue with this film is o'Selznicks script. He is most certainly not a screenwriter. Some of the dialog and scene changes are so bad it's sad.Towards the end there's a scene where the old judge is sitting with his wife and she tries to talk him out of sentencing the defendant to death and she says something like.."don't find her guilty or sentence her to death, she's had a hard enough life." Are you kidding me? How stupid is that. Girl kills her husband, who did nothing to her, and we should just let it pass? Gimme a break. This is that o'Selznick script writing again. The whole premise of the film is centered around how a high end barrister takes the case of a supposed husband killer and how everyone around him sees him falling in love with her. Within 20 minutes of the film there's already talk about it but there's one problem, there are no lead-ins letting you know its happened. I mean he meets with her twice in prison to talk about the case and there's no chemistry at all.Figuring out why this film was made is pretty simple. Read around online and you'll see the history behind this and right off you know that o'Selznick totally took over this film and therein lies the problem. He totally takes control of the film and just ruins it with bad casting and even worse screen writing. It's like taking a lawn mower mechanic and telling him to go work on a Ferrari. He had no business writing for this work. You can bet Hitchcock was glad to finish out his contract with this minimal work. Seemed like he just phoned this one in to be done with it. Being that this was his last film with this studio and knowing the Hitchcock time-line, you'll notice how after this film is when his best films were made. Hmmmm, I wonder why?Skip this one and save your brain power for a better film...cause this ain't a very good one.