GManfred This couple could be the British equivalent of Ralph and Alice. Overbearing bumbling oaf and his mousy, tolerant wife. When it started I didn't think I would like it as it was so unlike a Hitchcock film. But this picture grows on you and becomes more interesting as the story develops.As other reviewers have mentioned, a shlub couple, he a dreary accountant and she a dreary housewife, come into some money and decide to spend it on the high life topped off by a world cruise. They each fall in love with a third party before realizing they were meant for each other. At least as a default position."Rich And Strange" is part romance and part comedy, and both elements are understated in the English manner. Some of the comedy parts are quite humorous and some of the romantic moments are quite touching, and the acting is solid. Henry Kendall plays the oafish husband with traces of a stage background, and Joan Barry is as sensitive and appealing as she is lovely. Percy Marmont is a stalwart Englishman with principles - but will overlook them for Ms. Barry.When it started I thought maybe a five rating, but by the end I gave it a seven. As I mentioned, it gets better, and there are some unmistakable traces of The Master. It is a valuable inclusion in the Hitchcock canon, if for no other reason than being a step stone towards Hitchcock's evolution as one of filmdom's best directors.

aramis-112-804880 I saw this movie under the title "Rich and Strange" and the last word certainly describes the movie.Fred and Emily are a couple like most of us. Despite working all day, they never seem to be able to get ahead. They eat frugally and Emily makes her own clothes from patterns with cheap cloth.Suddenly, out of the blue, a wealthy uncle (I wish I had a wealthy uncle out of the blue) decides not to make Fred and Emily wait until he dies. He gives them enough money to travel the world and, for a time, break Fred out of the dreary office routine (rich uncle, where are you?).First, they go to Paris, where they live the high life. Then they ship off on a long cruise.Fred is not a good sailor, and this leads to some excellent touches in the first half. While Emily enjoys herself on board, Hitchcock makes unexpected, and hilarious, jump-cuts to Fred ill in bed. A great moment in early Hitchcock is when the terribly seasick Fred is presented with the ship's menu. It lasts only a few seconds, but it's worth the wait.The tension (in the movie and between Fred and Emily) builds when Emily meets a "Commander" who is smitten with her. Again, Hitchcock's humor shines through. The Commander always seems at a loss for words and Emily is forever interrupting him. Eventually she compliments him by telling him he's easy to talk to. After Fred finds his sea legs, he meets a Princess inexplicably smitten with him -- or is it his money? Fred's romance with the Princess is the silly side of infidelity; but when Emily begins returning the Commander's affection, it looks like coming into money destroyed Fred and Emily's marriage.One charm of "Rich and Strange" is that, though it's a talkie all the way through, Hitchcock has inserted titles between the scenes, as in the silent movie days, making a droll running commentary on Fred and Emily's new life.The problem is, about the half-way mark, "Rich and Strange" (sometimes going under the romantic alias "East of Shanghai") feels like it's stretching out. I don't know if Hitchcock got bored with it, but I certainly did. When Fred and Emily were stranded alone on a sinking ship I hoped they would go down with it. But even at that point, I had a lot of movie to go.Hitchcock made few straight comedies. "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" (1941) is another wry take on marriage benefiting from the considerable talents of Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery. The under-appreciated "The Trouble with Harry" is a romantic comedy with couples brought together by an inconveniently dead body. Despite having a great sense of humor that followed Hitchcock through his television show and right up to his last movie ("Family Plot"), his comedies (even "Harry") have soggy bottoms. Hitchcock is really at the top of his game when his dark comic sensibility creeps into movies of almost unbearable suspense. When "Rich and Strange" begins to sound melodramatic, I had a sense Hitchcock felt (pardon the pun) all at sea.Nevertheless, for a Hitchcock completist, this film is a must. It has wonderful touches here and there.

TheLittleSongbird While Alfred Hitchcock is my personal favourite director, he's not been without his disappointments. None of his films that I've seen are terrible, or even bad, but there are a few that have underwhelmed. Rich and Strange doesn't see him at his best(and for reasons other than it not been typical Hitchcock), nor does it see him at his worst. It is beautifully shot and has very evocative scenery and very well done special effects for the time. Hitchcock also does bring some great stylistic touches that does give a feeling that you're watching a Hitchcock film(something that I did not find with Juno and the Paycock, Jamaica Inn and Under Capricorn), and with the opening sequence, Paris travel montage and climax there are some strong moments. The music has a lushly orchestrated jauntiness that fits well with Rich and Strange's tone. Joan Barry is stunningly elegant and gives Emily a real likability. The story is disjointed though, with a darker-edged second half that doesn't bode entirely with the first, and is also very slight in structure, giving a rather tedious feel to some of the less eventful moments. The dialogue has some nice bits of subtle humour but did need a more playful touch and it got turgid in the scenes that weren't paced all that well. Of the characters, Emily is the only one who comes across as interesting or likable, the rest are too thinly sketched and emotionally detached for my tastes. Henry Kendall also seemed to me a little too sophisticated and trying too hard in his role, part of why his and Barry's chemistry didn't convince was that you never really see what it is that Emily sees in Fred in the first place. All in all, strange but still interesting. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Steffi_P One of the problems with Hitchcock's reputation as "master of suspense" is that any films whose faces don't fit tend to get overlooked. Rich and Strange is just such a picture, although it was apparently a project close to Hitch's heart, and incidentally is very good indeed.One of the best aspects of Hitchcock's early British work is that it has a grace and beauty to it that was missing in the emotionally cold (albeit technically brilliant) features of his Hollywood career. Rich and Strange is arguably the most graceful and beautiful of them all. We open with a tight rhythmic sequence that reminds me of the early musicals of Rene Clair, or Rouben Mamoulian in Love Me Tonight, with the characters' activities – in this case the lead man navigating the rush hour – choreographed to a musical score. Later we are treated to a comical montage of a whistle-stop tour of Paris, and on the cruise a series of flowing, dreamlike images.Like all of Hitchcock's earliest pictures, Rich and Strange features a lot of visual attention-grabbing, such as obtrusive camera moves or similar images dissolving into each other. Sometimes – particularly in his silent films – this could be a bit unnecessary and distracting, but in Rich and Strange it works for two reasons. First, it is always woven into that musical flow of images. Secondly he never allows it to interfere with the dramatic moments. In the second half of the picture, when the drama becomes more intense, his visual style settles down and the scenes are shot in a fairly straight ahead manner. This balanced structure, switching smoothly from heavy stylisation to stark simplicity as and when the story demands it, makes Rich and Strange all the more affecting and compelling.The plot has similarities to the forbidden-love dramas that Cecil B. DeMille made in the late teens and early 20s. Like DeMille, Hitchcock uses positioning of characters to show the affairs developing – increasingly pairing the lovers together in one shot, amidst pretty framing devices. What is particularly neat is how, as Henry Kendall and Joan Barry's marriage starts to fall apart, Hitch several times frames them side by side appearing as mirror images of each other. These shots look quite funny, but also seem to summarise the state of mind of an increasingly bored couple. The dialogue is more or less superfluous – which is just as well with the appalling sound quality.Contrary to what some have said, Rich and Strange is not "one for Hitchcock completists only". Of course it will come as a disappointment for anyone expecting a thriller, but taken as the romantic drama that it is, this as tightly structured and expertly envisaged as the greatest of his suspense pictures. Rich and Strange is easily the best film from the first ten years of Hitch's career, and I would even go as far as to place it among the top four or five Hitchcocks of all time.