FILM

The Trouble With Harry. Most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies are funny–that’s part of what makes them so jolting–but this one is a not-so-straight black comedy about a group of people in a small Vermont town who stumble across a corpse in the woods and can’t decide what to do with it. Shirley MacLaine made her screen debut in this 1955 film, and the rest of the ensemble cast includes such familiar faces as John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick, and Jerry Mathers–yes, that Jerry Mathers. Eisenhower-era audiences didn’t buy the premise of John Michael Hayes’ screenplay, and even now The Trouble with Harry is probably the least well known of Hitchcock’s middle-period major-studio pictures. Might its fey, off-center humor make it ripe for revival today? See for yourself, and be sure to note Bernard Herrmann’s droll score (his first for Hitchcock) and the gorgeously autumnal cinematography of Robert Burks (TT).