MOVIE REVIEWS : Hitchcock Does a (Dead) Body Good in ‘Harry’

‘The Trouble With Harry” is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s slightest movies. That’s not bad, though--this prolonged joke about a body that keeps turning up is airy and unpretentious--just Hitch making like a wise guy for 99 minutes.

The 1955 film, screening tonight as part of UC Irvine’s “Double Vision” series, lacks narrative drive and the usual Hitchcockian corridors of suspense. You won’t find any tension peaks or misleadingly serene valleys here: The only shocks come from the eccentric characters and how they react to each other and to Harry, the bothersome corpse.

It’s worth noting, then, that this was one of Hitchcock’s favorite pictures. He delighted in its droll, English humor and the joy that came from subverting his image as Hollywood’s foremost creator of edgy movies. Although “Rear Window” came out in 1954 and “To Catch a Thief” also appeared in 1955, Hitchcock, who often bemoaned the fact that he didn’t make more comedies, frequently referred to “The Trouble With Harry” as the film he enjoyed most from that period.

The movie opens with beautiful shots of the Vermont countryside, thick with the reds and golds of fall. A small boy (played by Jerry (The Beaver) Mathers) is roaming about, a Flash Gordon ray gun in hand, when he stumbles across Harry’s body. He runs off to tell his mom, who also is Harry’s wife, played by a very young Shirley MacLaine in her first film role.

Then we’re introduced to the gallant Capt. Albert Wiles (Edmund Gwenn, probably best known as Kris Kringle in “Miracle on 34th Street”), who thinks he accidentally shot Harry while rabbit hunting. MacLaine shows up, then an artist (John Forsythe), then a handful of other rural oddballs, all of whom feel implicated in some way. Harry gets buried, then he’s unearthed, then buried again, then . . . OK, that’s enough of the plot.

The kick here is watching Hitchcock get loose, especially with the witty, often peculiar dialogue that screenwriter John Michael Hayes concocted (the script, by the way, was based on Jack Trevor Story’s novel of the same name). Everyone is so blithe about poor Harry (he’s like a nuisance to be dealt with and then forgotten) that any thoughts about morbidity seem out of place. Hitchcock uses him as a comedian’s foil, like W. C. Fields with Baby Leroy or Chaplin with his tramp’s cane.

The acting is remarkable. Everyone is so low-key that the humor sort of sidles up to you. Gwenn is perfectly pragmatic about the whole affair, and MacLaine and Forsythe have a weird screwball chemistry. Forsythe is especially wild--it’s hard to recognize him from the quieter, more urbane roles he has so frequently played later in his career.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Trouble With Harry” will be shown tonight at 7 and 9 at UC Irvine Student Center’s Crystal Cove Auditorium. Tickets: $4. Information: (714) 856-6379 .