Despite being far away from the highest tier of Alfred Hitchcock movies, The Trouble With Harry features a line that the director considers the best out of all his films. Following two back-to-back hit collaborations with James Stewart, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief, and before their next one in The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock took a brief break from his partnership with the star to make The Trouble With Harry.
The film features a cast of recognizable actors, including John Forsythe and Edmund Gwenn, and Shirley MacLaine in her film debut. It was a surprising departure from the suspense thrillers that dominated this particular phase in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie career. Like most Alfred Hitchcock movies, a murder was at the heart of the story, but setting it apart from most of his films is that The Trouble With Harry was a comedy.
The story centered on a dilemma caused by the corpse of Harry Worp. Due to various run-ins with the other characters in the cast, multiple people had good reason to believe they were responsible for Harry’s death, and therefore tried to dispose of the body separately, resulting in humorous antics – as well as a quote that Hitchcock considers a career-best.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Favorite Line From His Own Movies Is From The Trouble With Harry
“What Seems To Be The Trouble, Captain?” Is Alfred Hitchcock’s Favorite Line From His Movies
In a 1963 interview where Alfred Hitchcock discussed his work on several of his older films, Hitchcock was effusive in his praise of the movie, clearly proud of the project [via The Hitchcock Zone]. According to him, “it has in it my favorite line of all the pictures I ever made.” As Hitchcock explains, the line in question was spoken by Mildred Natwick’s character, Miss Gravely.
When Edmund Gwenn’s Captain Albert Wiles was pulling the legs of Harry Corp’s body toward the beginning of the film when the corpse was first discovered, he was spotted by Miss Gravely, who reacted with, “What seems to be the trouble, Captain?“
It’s a rather tame response to witnessing someone carrying a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ body, and that’s ultimately what makes the line stand out so much. Hitchcock says he sees the line as “terribly funny,” as it captures “the spirit” of the film. Adding to the humor of it all is Albert Giles’ response: “Well, it’s what you might call an unavoidable accident. He’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.”
His remark reciprocates the same ᴅᴇᴀᴅpan tone of Miss Graveley’s statement, lacking in the seriousness one would expect of such a situation, making it one of the most memorable interactions in The Trouble With Harry.
Why Alfred Hitchcock Loves The Trouble With Harry So Much
The Trouble With Harry Is One Of Alfred Hitchcock’s Personal Favorites
The Trouble With Harry is evidently a film that Alfred Hitchcock was quite fond of, so much that his affection for the movie isn’t matched by its reputation. The Trouble With Harry didn’t perform well at the box office, and doesn’t have the enduring legacy of other Hitchcock classics, such as Rear Window, Notorious, North by Northwest, or Psycho.
its the movie’s style of humor that appeals so strongly to Hitchcock, simply because it suits its own personal tastes.
That’s not to say it’s a bad film, of course, but its 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes score – as good as that is – still leaves much daylight between it and Alfred Hitchcock’s most celebrated movies. As for why he holds it in such high esteem, its the movie’s style of humor that appeals so strongly to Hitchcock, simply because it suits its own personal tastes.
Explaining his love for the film, Hitchcock said, “very personal to me because it involves my own sense of humor about the macabre.” It would seem that Alfred Hitchcock has a deep appreciation for the type of morbid humor found in the movie’s source material, which makes sense of his desire to bring the story to the big screen.
Alfred Hitchcock rarely made comedies, so it’s easy to see The Trouble With Harry as one of the director’s only opportunities to utilize this particular type of humor that he enjoyed so much.
