The Trouble With Harry

Is considerable.

Perhaps television, or a newly-found and lamentable boredom with the bizarre, have changed Alfred Hitchcock's movie-making ethic. At any rate, this latest chip from the ingenious block has carved a new grain--the obvious, and very disappointing, situation comedy. The unmistakable Hitchcock touches remain, but the strained and tiresome have displaced the starting and quasiserious.

The setting is a Vermont village adorned in the technicolor hues of Autumn. Harry, a stranger, is found dead at the top of the hill. The rabbit-hunting old man, the frustrated town matron, and the rebellious wife all suspect each is responsible for the evil deed himself. The first two are remorseful, the last seems pretty relieved.

The infinite complications that develop when they try to cover the misfortune, which they figure is best done by earthing old Harry on top of the hill, are inevitable. The script Hitchcock uses is in the manner of a very garrulous Noel Coward, lacking a great deal of the sponteneity and verve which make salon situation humor tolerable. Funny verbal exchanges might have saved the endless repetition of burying Harry, digging him up, and then burying him again. Poor cold Harry must not have been amused.

The characters are immediately offensive because they are types incapable of further development. Edmunds Gwenn, as rabbit hunter who fears he has bagged his first man, seems adequate. All of the indecisive funeral conterie suffers in over-acting, and Gwenn appears the most obvious. John Forsythe, surely the least talented and most stupid of Vermont's 15,000 artists, strains in his attempt to "see things" as no one else in the hamlet can. One wishes he were spoofing. Shirley MacLaine's irregular love life seems of little concern to either Forsythe or herself, which is a good thing. She is attractive, vulgar, well-cast and a good match for Forsythe.

Alfred Hitchcock apparently never appears in The Trouble With Harry. He should have flown to California for the weekend to see what the Vista Vision boys were doing to his name.