One of the more interesting anecdotal facts about The Paradine Case is that, at the time of its production, it was considered extraordinarily expensive, with the cost to produce this film being close to that of Gone with the Wind, the gold standard for epic-scale filmmaking. Where this money went is anyone’s guess, since the film is far too small to justify such exorbitant resources. The adaptation of the novel by Robert Smythe Hichens had a lot of promise (especially since the writer himself was a very notable journalist in his time), so one would naturally think that whoever helmed it would be able to do a decent enough job with a story that was straightforward and relatively unfurnished. The hands that took over the production was Alfred Hitchcock – and its perhaps his presence that makes The Paradine Case even less effective, because when the proverbial Master of Suspense is steering the production, one has to expect a level of quality, which I’m not entirely sure we received here. A star-studded cast, a few tremendous writers contributing to the screenplay (with Hitchcock himself working with his personal and professional partner Alma Reville in the creation of the story) and a very promising sense of direction all indicate the inherent potential possessed by this film – so the revelation that it is one of the less-convincing of Hitchcock’s work is not one that is easily palatable, something that we do tend to learn far too late into the film.

Despite having made several of the greatest films in the history of cinema, Hitchcock was known for a few failures on occasion – not everything he made could be expected to be a masterpiece, especially at the rapid pace at which he often directed at least one film a year, if not two. He was a notoriously prolific filmmaker, and while the vast majority of his films are at least entertaining (which helps compensate for the slightly weaker efforts), The Paradine Case is one of the more unfortunate entries into the career of the esteemed filmmaker. His direction is adequate but unremarkable, and it very likely joins a few other of his films that essentially lacks his directorial flourishes, and instead function as a film in which he did not have much authorial voice – that would likely be more attributed to the producer and known film industry tyrant David O. Selznick (who seemed intent on funding a film that he believed to be the next Gone with the Wind, a bizarre expectation of a gritty and twisted crime procedural). In the process of too many voices being involved in the film’s creation, The Paradine Case begins to fall apart from its earliest moments, and it never really seems to be able to turn on the hypothetical ignition, staying in a state of complete neutrality, with a few moments where we feel the rumbles of some worthwhile activity, only to be met by yet another instance of heavy-handed storytelling that doesn’t amount to anything all that compelling, let alone vaguely interesting.

Primarily, one of the most significant issues with The Paradine Case is that it is a film undergoing something of an identity crisis. Hitchens’ original book is a straightforward crime story about a death that could be either a suicide or murder, depending on the perspective. Yet, when it was translated to film, there seemed to be three very different kinds of approaches being taken, undoubtedly the product of Hitchcock and Selznick wrestling for dominance over a film that really did not require an immense amount of dedication outside of its basic storyline and ensuring that it was brought to the screen adequately – the latter’s credit as one of the screenwriters is particularly telling, since a cursory glimpse into the production history of the film will inform any reader about the producer’s methods of restructuring based on what he thinks will be palatable to viewers, rather than anything even vaguely artistic. It somehow tries to combine courtroom drama, romantic melodrama and crime procedural inspired by the film noir movement that was occurring concurrently – and while it isn’t the first time multiple genres have been woven together to create something that takes the best from all of them, The Paradine Case instead finds itself being a jumble of ideas that really never amounts to anything of note. The stunning camera work done by the director of photography Lee Garmes is rendered essentially redundant when there is very little of value for him to capture, with the liberal leaps between genres harming the film in ways that may not have been clear at the start, but gradually start to erode any goodwill we may feel based purely on the people involved in the film.

It’s easy to look at the cast of this film and feel impressed – after all, it is a wide-ranging assembling of individuals from different parts of the world, all placed under the guidance of a director who, amongst many other qualities, had a real knack for working with actors, often drawing out career-best work from all of them. The Paradine Case is peculiar for the fact that absolutely no one is doing remarkable work, despite several of them being at the peak of their popularity. Gregory Peck (whose presence must have cut heavily into the enormous budget of the film) does his best to play the sympathetic lawyer trying desperately to prove the innocence of his client, played by a striking but perpetually reserved Alida Valli, who was considered a promising young actress in her native Italy, but turned in a relatively unconvincing performance here. The two interchangeable elder statesmen of prosperous character actors during the Golden Age of Hollywood, Charles Coburn and Charles Laughton, have sizable supporting roles, neither of them seeming all that interested in venturing out of their niche (Laughton almost seems dreadfully bored as the judge, which makes us wonder whether this was a deliberate choice in constructing the character, or the actor’s response to the lack of material given to his character). Louis Jourdan is seemingly the only person putting in the effort to playing a character, taking on the part of the villain of the story – and considering everything else that surrounds him, it only makes sense that he turns out to be the tragic hero, someone who acted as a scapegoat for the delusions of other people. The performances in The Paradine Case are not bad, they’re just uniformly uninspired, but considering how meagre the film around them was, and how it struggled to find a coherent way to tell an otherwise simple story.

The Paradine Case may not be the lowest point in Hitchcock’s career, mainly because it is not a bad film, just one that doesn’t capture our attention like the majority of his work. However, it is firmly in the lower tier of his career, a place which only grows to be more populated as we move backwards in looking at his work – he was not always a director known for making films that were automatically brilliant, and peppered in between his works of incredible artistry are a few failures, of which this is one of the more notable. It lacks the sparkling wit and genuinely palpable atmosphere of tension we normally find from his films, and it seems like Hitchcock was simply going through the motions, taking a well-written but straightforward novel, and adapting it to the screen in a way that would give the audience what they expected. The problem is, he was always a director who thrived on his ability to surprise us – it’s not surprising that he had a strong admiration and working relationship with Roald Dahl, since they both lived by the creed of “expect the unexpected”, and with a film like The Paradine Case, you not only come to expect every movement and plot development, but grow gradually more disillusioned when it becomes clear that these hints are more misplaced than the romance or humour that are forcibly tacked onto the film. Unconvincing, aimless and dull beyond comprehension, The Paradine Case is not the strongest effort from a filmmaker that normally defined excellence within an art form that he assisted in mastering, making this an even bigger disappointment.