Spoilers ahead.

Film Almost as soon as Stage Fright opens with Jane Wyman and Richard Todd fleeing from somewhere by car, it cuts to an extended flashback with explains exactly how Wyman and Todd got themselves into this mess. For much of the film, our knowledge of the characters is tempered by the information we’re given, about how Marlene Dietrich’s actress asked Todd to cover for the accidental murder of her husband. Then in the final moments, the rug is pulled from under us when its revealed that everything Todd has said is a lie, that his narration was unreliable. It’s a revelation, not just to Wyman’s character who’s trusted him through much of the film, and to us too because it seems so unlike Hitchcock to employ an unreliable narrator.

Reflecting on the decision later, he thought he’d cheated the audience by creating surprise rather than suspense and some critics agreed with him, but with respect to the Master, he’s wrong (and should have more courage in his conviction) and they’re wrong too. We’ve come to expect this kind of unreliable narration in recent years – The Usual Suspects being the most prominent example. But to do it in this kind of setting is perhaps one of his greatest twists, and shows what could have been a different sort of director – the confidence trickster. Instead he became the suspense director – we find out about the switcheroo in Vertigo half way through the film so that it then becomes about Jimmy Stewart’s reaction. Psycho’s an interesting case, but I’ll talk about that when I get there.