Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) is a New York musician who is wrongly arrested for a series of robberies. He is identified by several witnesses who seem to recognise him. He and his wife Rose (Vera Miles) seek to prove his innocence, but events take their toll on both of them in different ways – especially Rose, who suffers a mental decline.
It’s a noir-ish crime drama that – like all Hitchcock tales – takes on an additional psychological dimension and keeps you guessing until the very end.
An advertising executive is mistaken for a dangerous agent, and ends up being pursued across the USA by a ruthless team of criminals.
As usual, Hitchcock makes the most of shadows and unusual angles to enhance the drama. But those tricks are slightly undermined by the unusually artificial-looking brightness of some of the scenes. Also, the silly “comedy” moments with Cary Grant’s mother (played by Jessie Royce Landis, who’s clearly too young) fall flat and stand out as awkwardly jarring. Likewise, a drink-driving scene ends up being oddly comical and you’re left unsure quite how you are supposed to take it.
The iconic Mount Rushmore is an inspired choice of location for the place where the action plays out and the ending is genuinely thrilling.
The new head of Green Manors, a Vermont-based mental asylum (Gregory Peck) turns out to be an imposter and possibly a dangerous killer. But psychoanalyst Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) falls in love with him and wants to unpick the mysteries of his past to clear his name.
It’s stylish and visually intriguing, like all of Hitchcock’s work. There’s plenty of tension and excitement, too, but the plot suffers because it hinges – somewhat ridiculously – on the interpretation of a dream. The dream itself was devised by Salvador Dalí and is full of that artist’s familiar imagery.
Peck seems a little wooden, but Bergman is terrific.
It’s to Hitchcock’s credit that he never explains away the cause of these bizarre events. You can interpret them any number of ways. Is it a Cold War allegory? Is it about repressed sexuality? Or is it simply a horror story?
It’s strange in other ways, too. The relationship between Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) doesn’t follow the usual love-story progression. And the age difference between Mitch and his younger sister is also striking. The widowed mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) is also deeply odd. Initially, I thought the natural disturbance was a reflection of her grief manifested in nature – and it's possible that this is another of the many intended interpretations.
The ending satisfies because it’s ambiguous and doesn’t offer any easy solutions.
