The Paradine Case (1947)

This Hitchcock film is a courtroom drama starring Gregory Peck amongst others. The movie is about a woman, Mrs. Paradine, whose blind husband has recently been poisoned. She is arrested accused of murdering her husband. Gregory Peck is to be her lawyer. What follows is a bit of courtroom drama mixed with a bit of romance and suspense. The film starts out rather slow and isn't all that exciting until the court scene. The courtroom part of the film is most excellent, but unfortunately only takes up about a third of the film.

The acting, is much like the plot. There's nothing terribly great other than the courtroom scenes with one exception - Mrs. Paradine's character, portrayed by Alida Valli, is very well-acted.

Overall, this is a decent effort, but not one of Hitchcock's best. It was the last film he made under David O. Selznick. It's worth seeing for a Hitchcock fan, but the film isn't quite good enough for me to say it's a must-see for anyone else.

77.5/100
C+

UP NEXT: Either My Fair Lady or Spellbound.

Looking at my more recent reviews I think my scores are tending to be too high. 77.5 for this might be too high - The Petrified Forest got a 77.0 and that was a far more interesting movie to watch. Das Boot, while phenomenal, got a 95.5. Is that too high?

I'll try and keep this in mind for future reviews.