Word: hitchcock
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...Justice Department continued to take evasive action. Before the case went to trial, Robert M. Hitchcock, a special assistant in charge of prosecuting the case, made what he described later as a "deal" with Jaffe's lawyer. With an almost surreptitious air, the Government took the case to a Saturday morning court session (court almost never sits on Saturday morning). It was a strange hearing. Jaffe's lawyer, Albert Arent, did most of the talking. He explained to Federal Judge James Proctor that Jaffe, who was pleading guilty, had merely acted from "an excess of journalistic zeal." Hitchcock...
Illegal Evidence? But so far as some Congressmen were concerned, it was only the beginning. Michigan's Republican Representative George Dondero demanded an investigation. Early in 1946 a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee summoned FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers to hear their stories. Why had Hitchcock made the "deal?" His explanation was that Justice lawyers had suddenly had qualms about the legality of their evidence. They were afraid that the argument might be made that the Government had got on the trail of the stolen documents by illegal means. They were afraid the Government might...
Never a man to make things easy for himself, Director Hitchcock has tried in Stage Fright to work within the discipline of a tricky story conceit: his heroine (Jane Wyman) plays romantic nip & tuck simultaneously with a suspected murderer (Richard Todd) and the Scotland Yard man (Michael Wilding) who is tracking him down. Hitchcock exploits the situation as much for chuckles as for chills. The result is an entertaining show, handsomely produced against a London background, studded with effective scenes and enlivened by an excellent cast that includes an uncannily young and beautiful Marlene Dietrich and able British Comedian Alistair...
Even so, coming from the director who once doted on torturing his audiences with suspense, it is a disappointing film. At its best, melodrama should gull the spectator into believing what he sees, if only while he is seeing it. In working out Stage Fright's intriguing premise, Hitchcock tortures his story more than his audience, burdens them both with too obvious a load of improbabilities...
...does Hitchcock come up to his old high mark in his use of British humor. Though it tries for more laughs than it gets, the comedy is funny enough to give the script its major distinction. But the fun no longer serves the shrewd purpose to which the director put it in The Lady Vanishes, where it lent extra point to the suspense. In Stage Fright the humor is mainly incidental, and pursued at enough length to slacken the story's tension...