Rich and Strange

There's no beating around the bush here with a fun analogy or anecdote to segue into the review. This movie is a slog. I'll give credit where it's due about the direction; Hitchcock's creation of a set that looks like a ship and how he uses it shows directorial flair. But that's where my compliments stop. Rich and Strange is just tiresome and dull. It's all about a married couple, the husband hating his lower-middle class life and dreaming of money and far away lands. He inherits some money with the condition he uses it for travel, and so he and his wife go on a whirlwind tour of Europe and then a cruise to Asia. While on the boat, they both flirtations with other people, and their marriage deteriorates. I'm not sure if Hitchcock was trying for a comedy, a drama, or a mixture of both, but neither really apply. There's nothing funny, and there's little drama to be had. It's hard to imagine the couple ever having been happy, so there's no sadness to see them pulled apart by romance from outside the marriage. It's just watching two people who shouldn't be together in the first place use opportunities afforded them a dalliance that, against all common sense, proves to one another how much they mean to each other. I didn't care, I didn't laugh, I didn't feel anything except a growing sense of time passing much slower than it really was. There are good pre-Hollywood Hitchcock movies. The Lodger, The Lady Vanishes, and The 39 Steps, for instance. But many of the pre-Hollywood movies I've seen from his filmography are either experimental in nature, or a director finding his footing on material he isn't wholly invested in. Rich and Strange is definitely among the latter, and not the better for it. It's hard to recommend this to anybody, even to completionists.