Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E28, "Portrait of Jocelyn"

Mark (Philip Abbott of The F.B.I.) and Debbie (Nancy Gates, last seen in “Salvage”) are picking up a painting: it’s Mark’s one-year anniversary gift to his still-blushing bride (AHP excels at the kind of lustiness that could still pass muster with 1950s network censors, and Debbie enthusiastically snuggling up to her husband and saying, “Let’s celebrate at home” is a good example). But they get a nasty shock. Whatever painting Mark ordered isn’t there, and what they get instead is a portrait of his beautiful ex-wife, Jocelyn, whom he divorced for desertion.

Debbie, who feels very “second Mrs. de Winter” about it all, is both frustrated and fascinated. Once she semi-accepts that this isn’t some cruel joke Mark’s playing on her, she buckles down to try to solve the mystery. There’s a streak of self-destructiveness here, since she’s at least a little convinced that Mark’s never stopped loving his first wife; it’s like watching Dolly Parton desperately contrive chances for her man to run into Jolene.

That makes Debbie our best window into the off-screen Jocelyn’s effortless elegance. “She was born to be seen,” Debbie says, which lends additional weight to what we do see: Jocelyn flattened into a painted image, like an icon to be worshipped, and her raincoat and scarf handled like sacred relics. She’s supposed to be out of the picture, but she is the picture, and Debbie’s left as a spectator. The names, too, are a great touch–one Debbie herself surely recognizes. Debbie is familiar and homey, its clunky plosive middle only lightly relieved by its ending; it’s a common nickname, made for accessibility and casual intimacy (Debbie is not Debra). Jocelyn is rarer and slinkier. It’s a name that shimmies. (And Joelyn is not Joss.)

But Debbie is not our protagonist here, though she may sometimes feel like it. We’re actually following Mark, who investigates Jocelyn’s reappearance in his life as he oscillates between outbursts and quiet doggedness. Maybe he should leave all this alone: Jocelyn’s brother, Jeff (Raymond Bailey of The Beverly Hillbillies), says he thought it was good Mark was moving on with his life: “She doesn’t love you, Mark. She never did.” Mark, too, was outclassed; if he dies, his own wife probably won’t remember him as well as she still remembers Jocelyn.

Our conflicted investigators track Jocelyn down to the same rural seaside village she once lived in with Mark, but now she seems to have remarried: her new husband is an artist, John Baragrey’s Clymer. Baragrey had a limited movie career but frequently appeared on TV, and he was an especially regular presence in the medium’s drama teleplay broadcasts. Watching this, I can see why: though he arrives to the episode late, he invigorates it with some dark energy. (Which is a good thing, because while it’s trying for atmosphere, it sometimes only lands on “sleepy.”) It’s like he has all of Mark’s mood swings and ambivalence pressure-corked and given a good shake.

There’s nothing egregiously bad about this episode, but it has some structural and POV problems I’ll get into when we talk about The Twist, and it all lacks a certain sense of flair. The inciting portrait incident feels far-fetched from the start, and the eventual explanation doesn’t do much to ground it, either. The performances are solid, but even when Baragrey and Abbott are running at their lines full-tilt, they can’t get to even half of Cassavetes’s electric intensity, so we’ve seen better. This is just a bit flat, a B- episode that maybe becomes only a C because the influences it’s drawing on and the works it’s prefiguring are so much better that it looks even weaker in comparison. We don’t need this in a world where we have Rebecca, Vertigo, and Laura.

The Twist: Jocelyn is actually dead, and Mark is the one who murdered her. Clymer is actually an undercover homicide detective, and the whole setup has been an extremely elaborate ruse to force Mark to admit the truth.

“I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, Lou.” It turns out that I’m much more willing to go along with extremely elaborate plans when they’re designed to commit murders, not solve them. This reveal might work better if “Clymer” were a private detective Jeff had hired; if Jeff is running the show, and it’s all plotted by a highly motivated amateur, this kind of kneecapped Vertigo scheme might make sense. I don’t think even the most diligent cop in the world is going to go for it, though.

Really, this kind of psychodrama is ill-served by having the meat of its meaning–Mark murdered Jocelyn, and now he’s being told she’s still out there walking around, having a life without him–buried in its final moments. If this is the story the show is telling, it makes much more sense to plunge us into Mark’s living nightmare alongside him, to have us dizzily questioning reality and fomenting suspicions. Instead, we’re kept on the outside, away from any real emotional engagement. In particular, it would be better if we were in his shoes and knew what he knew when we go to “Clymer’s” game of overwrought confession quick draw.

To be fair, “Portrait of Jocelyn” does seem to realize this problem, which is why it half-asses a Rebecca riff and briefly positions Debbie as a potential co-protagonist. But it drops her too soon for that approach to be effective either, especially since she’s kept off-stage for the finale. We hear that she was right–“I never should have married her. There never could be anybody like Jocelyn”–but she doesn’t hear it; we’re missing a reaction shot of the bottom falling out of her world the way some part of her always knew it would.

Directed by: Robert Stevens

Written by: Edgar Marvin (story), Harold Swanton (teleplay)

Up Next: “The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby”