Alfred Hitchcock
La congiura degli innocenti

"The Trouble with Harry" is a film by Alfred Hitchcock from 1955. The original title is "The Trouble with Harry," and it is inspired by the novel of the same name by Jack Trevor Story, released in 1950. It's a Technicolor film, which allows us to fully appreciate the beautiful Vermont countryside where it is set, thanks also to the excellent cinematography by Robert Burks.

The peaceful provincial life of the village of Highwater (in Vermont, indeed) is disrupted by a boy's discovery of a corpse on the hill overlooking the town; a corpse that will be identified as Harry Wrop from a letter found in his pocket. Disrupted in a manner of speaking, because the inhabitants of the aforementioned village show absolutely no signs of pity or compassion for the dead man, who is considered a kind of obstacle to the flow of the aforementioned peaceful and normal provincial life. As someone effectively wrote, the corpse is treated like a pack of cigarettes!

Their only interest is to get rid of the corpse to avoid potential troubles. Three of them, in fact, are sure they are the culprits of poor Harry's death: the elderly Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) is convinced he accidentally shot him with his rifle while hunting; the charming and enterprising Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine, here 21 years old and making her first appearance on the big screen), Harry's wife (whom he had abandoned just after the second night of marriage, as she had discovered he had absolutely no intention of having sexual relations with her: unconsummated marriage, in short) and the mother of Johnny (the boy who discovered the corpse), from a previous marriage, believes she killed him with a milk bottle to the head when he managed to trace her, sneaking into her house; Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick), a somewhat "aged" spinster, thinks she killed him by hitting him on the head with her shoe’s heel to defend herself after Harry, dazed and staggering due to the bottle he received from Jennifer, attacked her and dragged her into a bush mistaking her for his wife. To these strange characters is added the penniless painter Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) who, after also seeing the corpse and later "understanding the situation" by listening to the three "alleged culprits," decides to help them "dispose" of it, not before having painted it on his canvas, of course.

From the discovery of the corpse onwards (practically immediately), the film is a crazy sequence of wild plot twists, with the climax of the poor Harry’s corpse being buried and unearthed multiple times in the same day, finally "deposited" in a bathtub. There are also farcical, unsettling, humorous finds, or with all three of these characteristics at the same time: a door that opens and closes by itself several times; the boy Johnny confused about the passing of time, since, according to him, "today is tomorrow because yesterday was today and tomorrow will be yesterday"; two new couples that form (Wiles-Gramley and Rogers-Marlowe) laughing, joking, eating, and drinking in the non-awkward presence of the corpse; the penniless painter who, after receiving an offer from a millionaire to buy all his paintings, asks in exchange only simple gifts for his friends and himself instead of money; and so on.

In the end, Deputy Sheriff Calvin Wiggs (Royal Dano), who works on commission, seems close to solving the case, thanks mainly to the discovery, besides a pair of red shoes worn by the victim and "stolen" by a passing tramp, of Sam’s painting, which portrayed the dead man with his eyes closed: but was the man in the painting dead or just sleeping? Who knows!! There will be yet another plot twist, in the form, let's say, of evidence tampering.

It is a film that goes beyond the lines, grotesque, farcical, also cynical, malicious, paradoxical, permeated by a macabre humor, in my opinion, brilliant, although atypical if referred to the author and it didn’t achieve the same success as some of his other works. Besides the already mentioned total indifference practically of everyone towards the dead man and death (perhaps a way to exorcize it?), it stands out in the film that, while generally culprits (or alleged ones) do everything to absolve themselves, here the innocents (or alleged ones) seem to compete to blame themselves. And then: can everyone be deemed guilty of something, even of the murder of a man? Is no one ever completely innocent then?

But, ultimately, who is the murderer? Could it be the usual butler? Maybe I should watch it more carefully again, but it seems to me I didn't spot any butler in the film. So who? Well, the title (or rather, its "Italian translation") should help to understand. But if they are all innocent, they might as well put the corpse back in its place and pretend nothing happened: after all, you know, "today is tomorrow because yesterday was today and tomorrow will be yesterday"! Ah, did I not mention who the murderer is? But you wouldn't want me to start spoiling a film that was only released in 1955, would you? So, all you are left with is to watch it to find out!