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Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, Kay Walsh ... see more see more... , Alastair Sim , Sybil Thorndike , Miles Malleson , Hector MacGregor , Joyce Grenfell , André Morell , Patricia Hitchcock , Ballard Berkeley , Cyril Chamberlain , Helen Goss , Everley Gregg , Irene Handl , Arthur Howard , Jenny Neumann , Gary Sweet , Talks to Self

Stage Fright toys with our notions of the dividing line between reality and artifice by being set in the London theatre world. On the lam from the police, Richard Todd takes refuge in the home of his ... read more read more...former girlfriend, RADA student Jane Wyman. Todd has been spotted fleeing the scene of a murder, but he insists that he's innocent. Wyman believes his story, but knows that the police won't, so she decides to play detective herself. She also plays several other roles in a variety of disguises so as to escape the notice of genuine detective Michael Wilding. Top-billed Marlene Dietrich plays a Dietrich-like chanteuse whom Wyman pigeonholes as the real murderer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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62% liked it

5,546 ratings

Critics

88% liked it

16 critics

G, 1 hr. 50 min.

Directed by: Mark Bethune, Alfred Hitchcock

Release Date: April 15, 1950

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DVD Release Date: September 7, 2004

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Flixster Reviews (227)

  • mjgildea
    May 25, 2011
    mjgildea
    When I first started watching Alfred Hitchcock's movies, I would pretend I was part of an alien race that was going to pillage Planet Hitchcock. Not really, but go with it. I'd start with the classic major cities (Psycho, Vertigo, North By Northwest), then work my way out to the ... read moresmaller but still happening cities (Rope, The Trouble With Harry, The Birds.) But lately I'm sifting through the lesser cities. The dull ones that serve egg noodles with ketchup and try to pass it off as spaghetti with marinara sauce. The towns that close by six, have two traffic lights and are 40 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart. I'm not going to go as far as to accuse Stage Fright of being the geographic equivalent of the armpit of the world, it sure as hell isn't a Fresno, CA! Stage Fright more or less wears into territory that Hitchcock spent a lot of time walking upon with the innocent being chased while trying to disprove their guilt. Here he does so from a different perspective with a woman trying to prove the innocence of the object of her affection. Stage Fright's cast is pretty good (normally I can't stand Jane Wyman but she's not bad here) but Alastair Sim steals the show as Wyman's father and makes the movie pretty damn funny at points. Stage Fright did little to make me wonder if the rest of Planet Hitchcock was worth conquering but it could always be worse. It could be Planet Bay or Planet Shyamalan. And we all know that the crappiest towns on Planet Hitchcock are still better than the meccas on those hellholes.
  • SirPant
    March 28, 2011
    SirPant
    Stage fright has it's highs and lows, it's not one of his better films but that isn't saying much when you appreciate his amazing body of work. That said, here he invented one of my pet hates, the false flashback. He himself later admitted that he regretted it, a forgivable mista... read moreke though, especially when you consider his pioneering work within cinema - trial and error maketh' the man and all that. It is however, directed beautifully, I particularly enjoyed the backdrops of late 40's London, even to the point that I had to go on google-earth and check them out after the film. The performances are also very good, Jane Wyman & Marlene Dietrich are both brilliant but for me it's Alastair Sim who steals the show.
  • MeetMeinMontauk
    January 17, 2011
    MeetMeinMontauk
    I watched it only because it was going off of Netflix streaming. I just for the life of me could not get into this film. I wasn't invested in any character or interested in the story at all. Even with Marlene Dietrich in it. I'm not even sure if at the end I really knew all what ... read morewas going on. Sorry, I am just not a Hitchcock girl for the most part...
  • ajv2688
    October 25, 2010
    ajv2688
    This is such a creative and fun mystery movie. Sometimes it's a little confusing maybe, but in the end it's worth it. For some reason this is a lesser known Hitchcock movie, but it's one of my favourites, and I highly recommend it.
  • flixsterman
    October 17, 2009
    flixsterman
    Hitchcock considered the film's 'false flashback' sequence to be one of his greatest mistakes, citing that it made audiences feel betrayed. I'm not sure if it's quite as bad as all that but, in hindsight, it does seem to be an underhanded trick. Perhaps I'm more forgiving becau... read morese the cast here, notably Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich and Alastair Sim, are just so damn good. As it is, Stage Fright is a second tier Hitchcock production but only because others like Vertigo and Strangers on a Train set the bar so high.
  • matertenebraum
    December 14, 2008
    matertenebraum
    With such an unusual set of components, it was probably inevitable that "Stage Fright" would be a little uneven, but most of it works well enough. By Hitchcock's standards, it's average at best, but it is still an entertaining movie with an interesting story and a number of good ... read moresequences.

    Simply seeing the distinctive persona of Marlene Dietrich and the enjoyably unique style of Alastair Sim in an Alfred Hitchcock film would make for an interesting combination in itself. They are joined by a generally solid group of performers, with their own individual styles, and there are several characters who all get fairly sizable roles.

    Hitchcock's own approach here is a somewhat surprising contrast from his usual style of story-telling, and some of the developments must have seemed even more unexpected to the movie's original viewers. Another aspect of this is that for much of the movie none of the characters really takes and holds the focus, and as a result there are times when it seems to lack some flow.

    Yet there are a number of good points to it as well. There are plenty of the usual Hitchcock details that make things more interesting, and most of the cast members give good performances in themselves. Most of Hitchcock's movies are rather better than this one, but watching "Stage Fright" is still a better use of one's time than watching the weak present-day efforts in the genre
  • 76Majikat
    August 17, 2008
    76Majikat
    My least favourite Hitchcock, so far, I was a little bored of this one and didn?t think the storyline measured up to some of the others. Maybe there was too much love in this one for me?
  • jjnxn
    May 4, 2008
    jjnxn
    Hitchcock wasn't fond of this and while not among his masterpieces still a fine film with a good performance by Jane Wyman and a fun, lively one from the great Dietrich.
  • groaningbitch
    March 2, 2008
    groaningbitch
    "stage fright" is one of lesser classic hitchcockian flicks. first of all, it lacks a fatally insidious villain to impress the audience. second of all, the righteous justice-fighter doesn't seem to be fiercely affective, either. besides at most of the time, our hero is too busy f... read morealling in love that makes the crime exposure appear like a sudden blessed discovery. third of all, our heroine sinks into the hitchcockian misogyny pattern: women are meek stupified puppet of man as long as she's lovestruck, and that notion is enunciated in another hitchcock's lesser piece "spellbound" and his groundbreaking "vertigo"

    eve(jane wyman) is a theatre student who falls unfortunately for a murder suspect jonathan who loves the stage diva charlotte inwood(fashion icon marlene dietrich) who utilizes jonathan to dispose of her abrasive husband so she could ease at the bosom of her manager freddy whom charlotte truly cares. so the story is basically about how eve tries to reclaim jonathan's innocence by pretending to be charlotte's maid...and here comes a twist, she also falls head over heels in love again with the detective(michael wilding) who is in charge of the murder inspection.

    the dual impersonation of jane wyman as the fair lady and the clumsy maid is hitchcock's primary gimmick to tease the audience, but wyman refuses to uglify herself just because she doesn't want to be outshined terribly by her beautiful co-star marlene dietrich who utters the maxium of her allure with the christian dior constumes. so wyman chooses eclectism by downplaying the maid part. hitchcock reveals that in the conversations with trauffet that wyman literarily cried for this plea.

    marlene dietrich has led a long-term career of typecasting as the shrewd femme fatale with luring voice of siren and disciplined sense of fashion, so dietrich embraces her iconic status unfallingly well in various categories of cinema as savoring embellishment. she never takes her acting too seriously and she just wanna have fun with her glamour image which is her stockmarket asset in her own words. so dietrich's part in "stage fright" seems quite uneven in hitchcock flick since she deprives the riveting attention of jane wyman and other co-stars, and at some crucial points of plot developments, audience would rather listen to her singing "lazies girl in town" and "la vie de rose" than observe the happenings of the main scenes that is very distracting.

    hollywood villains always glitter with more refined sophistication than the naive heros, so are the female counterparts. dietrich's ultimate womanhood lacklusters jane wyman as adolescent cheerleader who bluntly just dives for whoever man she has a crush upon without consistancy. wyman's eve also doublecross dietrich's diva by entrapping her to the police evasdroping. thus audience may sympathesize with the schemefully crooked dietrich who is backstabbed by moralistic goodie-goodie wyman, and dietrich's contempt is subtly put as "i once had a dog, it bites me..so i shot it....when i give all my love, i always get trechery and hatred, just like my mother used to hit me on the face."...she spitefully metaphorizes wyman's betrayal as her dog biting her, then a circle of smoke surrounds over her complexion like mysterious fog as she stares up to the camera.

    without dietrich, "stage fright" would be more symmetrical but also more dull, so the cameos of dietrich are the visual feast to keep up audience's interests...but "stage fright" is neither marlene dietrich's glamorous mercenery entertainment or hitchcockian suspense thriller but a hybridized oddball.
  • DocHalister
    April 4, 2012
    DocHalister
    Second-rate Hitchcock fare. Jane Wyman is a simply awful choice for the lead and yet is on-screen practically constantly. Marlene Dietrich--still alluring at age 49--is by contrast much underused. The script itself is just journeyman suspense film material yet it might have wo... read morerked with better direction and casting. Actually...there is a little humor about half-way through that suggests the script might have worked better as a spoof.

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Critic Reviews

Variety Staff
February 4, 2008
Variety Staff, Variety

Wyman is delightful as embryo actress but the choice femme spot goes to Dietrich. Full Review

Dave Kehr
February 4, 2008
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

The issues aren't satisfactorily resolved, but Hitchcock seems to be exploring the ways in which various falsehoods -- the falsehoods of acting, storytelling, and art in general -- can lead to the truth Full Review

Bosley Crowther
January 28, 2006
Bosley Crowther, New York Times

One is strongly suspicious, after watching this helter-skelter film, that Mr. Hitchcock was much less interested in his over-all story than in individual scenes. Full Review

February 4, 2008
TV Guide's Movie Guide

The standard British murder mystery is raised to a higher plateau by Hitchcock in Stage Fright, but still falters in comparison to the best of the master's works. Full Review

June 24, 2006
Time Out

A fairly routine thriller, noted chiefly for its cheating flashback, though with much more to enjoy than its detractors -- including Hitchcock -- make out. Full Review

Walter Chaw
March 15, 2005
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central

Blame it on the subject matter: Stage Fright, especially for postwar Hitchcock, is all elbows. Full Review

Daniel Eagan
December 17, 2004
Daniel Eagan, Film Journal International

Good Dietrich vehicle with the famous "false flashback"

Jeffrey M. Anderson
September 20, 2004
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

Even a lesser Hitchcock film is as good as a great film by nearly anyone else. Full Review

Christopher Null
September 13, 2004
Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com

the central ridiculousness comes off as hokey at best, insulting at worst Full Review

Ken Hanke
November 24, 2003
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Often overlooked Hitchcock that's better than some of his more famous works.

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Stage Fright Trivia

  • Daryl Hannah suffers from stage fright - True or False?  Answer »
  • What happens at the end of Coyote Ugly to help Violet get over her stage fright  Answer »
  • Violet doesnt sing her songs even though she has a good voice because of stage fright ?  Answer »
  • In which Alfred Hitchcock movie did Marlene Dietrich sing The Laziest Gal in Town?  Answer »
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