A week of Hitchcock

INNOCENCE is the middle film in Jan Hrebejk's  loose trilogy encompassing sin, forgiveness, responsibility, blame and punishment.

Shirley MacLaine and John Forsythe in the Hitchcock film The Trouble with Harry.

THE middle film in a loose trilogy encompassing what he's ticked off as sin, forgiveness, responsibility, blame and punishment, Czech auteur Jan Hrebejk's 2011 drama Innocence (Tuesday, 6am, World Movies) stars popular Czech actor Ondrej Vetchy as a physical therapist to children accused of abuse.

Hrebejk is an assured, accomplished filmmaker whose work, most of the films written by long-time creative partner Petr Jarchovsky, is mature, provocative and as successful as any contemporary Czech director around. His previous successes Divided We Fall, Up and Down and the first part of the trilogy, Kawasaki's Rose, have all shown on World Movies in the past, with the third film, Honeymoon, only now opening commercially in Europe. As this is the only screening of Innocence this month, it is highly recommended.

The one and only Graeme Blundell will spend the week introducing key films in the oeuvre of Alfred Hitchcock on Fox Classics. In addition to such essential and much-discussed works as Strangers on a Train (Monday, 8.35pm, Fox Classics), Rear Window (Tuesday, 8.35pm), Vertigo (Wednesday, 10.35pm) and Psycho (Thursday, 10.45pm), Blundell will analyse a number of the Hitchcock films that are just as important, if not as well known.

A personal favourite has always been the mellow, New England-set 1955 black comedy The Trouble with Harry (Tuesday, 10.30pm, Fox Classics). The trouble with Harry, of course, is that he's dead, but nobody in the bucolic Vermont town can figure out how he got that way. The film showcases the charming big-screen debut of Shirley MacLaine.

Friday affords the rare opportunity to see Hitchcock's last two films back-to-back. Touted at the time as his return to British filmmaking for the first time in decades, 1972's Frenzy (Friday, 8.35pm) finds the master enthusiastically embracing Hollywood's new freedoms with explicit violence and topless nudity in the story of a serial killer stalking women in London.

The 1976 thriller Family Plot (Friday, 10.35pm, Fox Classics) was originally envisioned by screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who had also written North by Northwest, as a dark, convoluted tale of intrigue and betrayal.

In a different vein altogether, Busby Berkeley's refreshing 1949 Technicolor box office smash Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Saturday, 3pm, TCM) stars Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as baseball players and vaudevillians tangling with new team owner Esther Williams. Titled Everybody's Cheering when it was first released in Britain, the film has been scheduled for precisely the time a day-night double-header would commence stateside, and features such memorable Adolph Deutsch-penned tunes as Yes, Indeedy, O'Brien to Ryan to Goldberg and the anthemic title song.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

The Trouble with Harry (PG)
4.5 stars
Tuesday, 10.30pm, Fox Classics

Innocence (M)
4 stars
Tuesday, 6am, World Movies

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (G)
4 stars
Saturday, 3pm, TCM