The casting choice Alfred Hitchcock bitterly regretted: “Screwed up all the values and the whole basic situation”
While Alfred Hitchcock is still viewed as one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, modern criticism of his work is more nuanced than it may once have been. Something that colours much of his work, for instance, is his problematic depiction of women, which became a concern of certain critics as far back as the 1970s. Viewed within this lens, comments he made in 1963 about regrettable casting decisions on one of his films take on a new, much more uncomfortable, intent.
In 1947, Hitchcock signed up to make a courtroom thriller as the last picture in a seven-year contract with MGM’s David O Selznick. By this point, that deal had already yielded Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, and Notorious, all of which were hugely successful at the time and are now viewed as top-tier examples of Hitchcock’s oeuvre.
The same can’t be said for The Paradine Case, though, which Hitchcock wasn’t enthused about, but reportedly made out of a sense of contractual obligation. His biographer, Donald Spoto, claimed, “Hitchcock’s disgust with the content and method that were forced upon him conspired to produce an uneasy atmosphere from which Hitchcock could scarcely wait to extricate himself.” This didn’t go unnoticed by the film’s cast, either, with star Gregory Peck once saying, “He seemed really bored with the whole thing.”
Perhaps a portion of Hitchcock’s dissatisfaction with the film can be attributed to his frustration at being unable to cast the people he wanted. For starters, the director didn’t think Peck was right for his role as a barrister who falls in love with the mysterious Italian woman he defends in court from accusations she poisoned and killed her much older husband. “Peck wasn’t right for the lead,” Hitchcock complained to New Hollywood icon Peter Bogdanovich in 1963. “It should have been Ronald Colman or [Laurence] Olivier, someone more dignified and less earthy.”
As the supposed murderess, Hitchcock cast Italian actor Alida Valli in her Hollywood debut. Selznick spearheaded this decision, believing Valli was the most promising young talent emerging from Italy at the time. Hitchcock wanted Ingrid Bergman or Greta Garbo in the role, but came around to Valli, even offering some (extremely) faint praise when he said, “She was fine”.
Hitchcock’s true beef with the movie’s casting was centred around French actor Louis Jordan, who played Mrs Paradine’s valet André Latour. The story revealed that she killed her husband to be with Latour, and Hitchcock hated this twist once Selznick cast Jordan. He had envisioned the valet as a much more unattractive, lower-class person, which makes it shocking for the audience when they find out the beautiful Mrs Paradine slept with him. Instead, the casting of the classically handsome Jordan upset the delicate balance of the tale.
This all makes sense artistically, even if it conforms slightly too much to the superficial social mores of the time. However, the way Hitchcock explained it to Bogdanovich inadvertently reveals so much about his own disappointing personal preoccupations. “For me, the casting screwed up all the values and the whole basic situation,” he said, before things got decidedly more dubious.
“Any beautiful woman is a compromise for evil – sometimes the externals of evil can obscure the real woman,” Hitchcock claimed. He then argued that Latour’s “real character, which reflected the woman’s immorality, should have been a manure-smelling stable-hand and should have been played by Robert Newton or somebody like that.”
He added, “The point is, Peck degrades himself by falling for a woman who can take any man – even a groom. Obviously, the woman must have been a nymphomaniac. But for Peck to give up an elegant wife for this woman, he must be obsessed by her.”
Naturally, to modern ears, these quotes are wildly inappropriate, out of touch, retrograde, and horrifically offensive to women. Sadly, though, they’re entirely in keeping with Hitchcock as a person, and that’s the sad truth fans of his classic films have had to deal with ever since Laura Mulvey first defined the “male gaze” in 1975, and used Hitchcock’s films as prime examples.
