Unfairly dismissed as a film of minor pleasures, The Trouble with Harry is subtle and humble, but it’s also one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most assured, coherent pictures, and stands as his most full-bodied statement on the paradoxes of human nature.
Set in beatific, beautiful Vermont, Harry is a light comedy about how small-town charm can coexist with indifference towards violence. The charming and twisted opening scene, which stages the birth of a winter romance over a corpse (with one character casually stepping over the body as they go to make their exit) sets the tone.
Here, Hitchcock lavishes his attention on his characters’ idiosyncrasies (he may have famously referred to actors as cattle, but Hitchcock does love to revel in actorly mannerism as a cinematic effect unto itself). Every one of its protagonists are simultaneously sweet and mercenary: self-deprecating and generous and casually cruel and complicit in crime.
The policeman is cast as the story’s antagonist (Hitchcock claimed to fear policemen above everything). He’s as uncompassionate and arrogant and unlikable as our complicit band of small-town maybe-murderers are charming. It’s the band of small-town, accidental crooks who have our sympathy. Therein lies the joke. Murder only troubles us when we dislike the murderers.
Caves of Altamira 