Alas, Kane Isn't Able

Rating: 5/10 (24 July 2014)

Peter Viertel and Dorothy Parker are not two writers I would automatically team up although individually both are excellent, so much so that they were the selling point on this piece of cheese. I have a life-long aversion to Hitchcock, not because he is inept - he knows, for example, that one removes the lens cap before exposing any film, and which direction to point the camera in order to capture the actors going about their business. But probably ninety-nine per cent of the members of the Directors Guild know this much and they don't have critics genuflecting to them. In short, Hitch is a competent director, end of story, to mention his name in the same sentence as Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, George Stevens, et al is a joke.
So, here we have Robert Cummins, just off Kings Row and acting like he's never even seen a film set. Talk about everyman, this guy, so far as we know, has neither mother, father, brother, sister, nor any kith or kin whatsoever and NO ONE FINDS THIS STRANGE. This is the one where lil' ol' Mr Innocent, just going about his business, gets implicated in an 'incident' and finds himself on the run. Same thing happened to Cary Grant in North By North West and darned if he didn't wind up on one of the Great Stone Faces in Dakota. Here, in the prototype, Cummins winds up in the Statue of Liberty. Originality anyone?