The Paradine Case
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Year Released: 1947
Rating: 1.0
To say Hitchcock never made a bad film is ridiculous: for all his timeless classics (at least eight or nine) and pretty good-but-flawed efforts, he has made several terrible pictures that he just didn't seem to have his heart into, and this is one of them (also in that category: Topaz, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Trouble With Harry). He complained in the seminal book Hitchcock/Truffaut about the cast being forced upon him and their performances as contributing to the film's failure; I'd also like to add that the screenplay, written by David O. Selznick himself, is riddled with overwrought dialogue and exceptionally bland conversations. Hitch aficionados may want to watch so they can absorb all the sexual references and double entendres (not to mention a few slick camera setups).
