The Trouble with Harry is unique in being the only black comedy Hitchcock ever made. Not that a majority of his work didn’t contain elements of black humor, because it did. The Trouble with Harry is different because it’s a full-length black comedy feature, with a sharp twist of understated British humor to boot. But this film is really a delicate, beautiful film about love. The black humor is the front that masks this deep sentimentality.
Harry the Corpse
The trouble with Harry is that he’s a corpse; a corpse that the lead characters in the film all feel responsible for in one way or another. That makes guilt the overriding theme of this film. Guilt, and the transference of it. Sam Marlowe, the painter played by John Forsythe, feels he must hide the corpse to protect his new love interest, Jennifer. Jennifer, played by Shirley MacLaine in her big screen debut, feels that a blow to the head delivered by her was the cause of Harry’s death. Captain Wiles, played by Edmund Gwenn, feels an errant shot from his hunting rifle did Harry in. And Miss Gravely, Wiles’ new love interest, feels a blow to the head delivered by her with a shoe is what sealed Harry’s fate. They’re all wrong, but a hilarious comedy of errors ensues when these characters attempt to cover up each other’s and their own crimes.
Guilt is a dominant theme.
Hitchcock dealt with guilt in a lot of his works, due no doubt to his staunch Catholic upbringing. This film can probably be seen as the most elaborate and multi-layered exploration of the guilt that he was fascinated by, and loved to force upon his characters.
Art plays a big role in the film. From the opening credits, which detail a panoramic view of children’s artwork, ending on a drawing of a corpse which Sir Alfred signs his name upon; to the abstract paintings that Marlowe specializes in; to the pastel rendition of Harry that Marlowe draws, and which almost implicates him further. But the structuring motif of this film is Harry himself. He’s the fulcrum that all of the characters balance upon. Harry is buried and exhumed three times in the film. He’s even bathed and dressed up at one point by the frantic small-townspeople. Harry as a structuring motif symbolizes and concretizes that very guilt which motivates the characters’ actions.
Harry's tie tells it all.
Pay attention to Harry’s tie. It’s adorned with rows of hearts, along with abstract drawings of a figure that seems to be walking through a door. That tie tells you everything you need to know about the film and its major theme. It also foreshadows the mysterious opening door in the film. In Jennifer’s house, there’s a closet door that has the unnerving habit of opening on its own. It happens five times in the film, and the first time frightens the characters as they are in the middle of a discussion about what to do with Harry’s corpse. Captain Wiles even grabs his heart, and mentions that he thought Harry was behind the door (maybe that idea isn’t so odd when one thinks about the tie, and what it depicts). What is this strange occurrence? It’s almost a MacGuffin, that great empty symbol that Hitchcock treasured revolving his plots around. But it’s not. It’s really a bluff.
Bluffing was a technique Hitchcock loved to utilize in order to break (yet ultimately heighten) suspense. When this door opens by itself multiple times, and Hitchcock stings it with music, the audience expects something. In return, it gets nothing. The reasoning for this effect isn’t revealed until the fifth and final time the door opens on its own. It does during a tense scene when Deputy Sheriff Wiggs interrogates the characters about Harry’s whereabouts, while Harry rests in a bathtub just beyond his view. But the audience doesn’t know that Harry is in the tub when this scene begins. We assume they have hidden him in the empty closet, mainly because Marlowe leans conspicuously on the faulty door. When Wiggs leaves, and Marlowe moves away from the door, it opens suddenly. A rack falls down inside it, and makes a startling noise that shakes the characters in the film as much as it does the audience; and then, nothing. So after all that eerie conditioning through multiple bluffs, the payoff finally comes. These are the extreme lengths Hitchcock went to in the name of suspense.
Of course, like Lifeboat before it, this films moves in a circular pattern. We end right where we began, with Harry lying at rest in the woods, waiting to be found. Who knows what fate will befall the unlucky (or perhaps lucky) soul who stumbles upon him next? For the characters in the film, true love rests at the end of their journey with Harry. After they find it, as the film so aptly tells us with a closing title, the trouble with Harry is over. Ironic isn’t it, that Hitchcock’s lone black comedy is actually also his lightest and most optimistic creation? This is dimension through contradiction, in which Hitchcock excelled.
Buy The Trouble With Harry at my partner site DeepDiscount.com:
Other Alfred Hitchcock films discussed that you may also enjoy:
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Secret Agent” (1936)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Jamaica Inn” (1939)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Lifeboat” (1944)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “The Trouble with Harry” (1955)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Topaz” (1969)
HITCHCOCK: The Lost Masterworks – “Frenzy” (1972)