Gloucestershire Echo (14/Jan/1949) - The Paradine Case

Details

• article: The Paradine Case
• newspaper: Gloucestershire Echo (14/Jan/1949)
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Alida Valli, Ann Todd, Charles Laughton, Gregory Peck, Louis Jourdan, The Paradine Case (1947)

Article

The Paradine Case

Alfred Hitchcock, master of the cinema thriller, has given us a film which is well up to his usual high standard. The film is "The Paradine Case," completed in Hollywood about two years ago, but only now being shown in London owing to the U.S. ban on their new films in reply to our heavy import duty and other trade difficulties.

STUDY IN SUSPENSE

"The Paradine Case" is however, a picture worth waiting to see. It is a carefully built-up study in suspense—is the woman in the case guilty of the murder of her blind husband or not? Not until the last few minutes is that question answered.

Mrs. Paradine is played by the beautiful Italian actress Valli, who conveys the impression of smouldering fires beneath her outwardly calm demeanour.

Gregory Peck, in one of the most successful of his characterisations, has the part of the eminent counsel who defends her and falls victim to her witchery-to-the very great perturbation of his wife (Ann Todd).

There is a piercing study of a sadistic judge by Charles Laughton, and Louis Jordan, a romantic newcomer from France, gives a good account of himself as a proud and intense young man.