The Paradine Case is a 1947 courtroom drama with elements of film noir set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick.

Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the 1933 novel by Robert Smythe Hichens.

In London, Maddalena Anna Paradine (Alida Valli) is a very beautiful and enigmatic young Italian woman who is accused of poisoning her older, blind husband, a wealthy retired colonel.

Mrs. Paradine's solicitor, Sir Simon Flaquer (Charles Coburn), hires Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck), a brilliant and successful barrister, to defend her in court.

Meanwhile, Keane himself starts to focus his legal efforts on Colonel Paradine's French-Canadian manservant, André Latour, DCM & Bar (Louis Jourdan).

Attempting to summarize, he improvises a brief and faltering speech, admitting how poorly he has handled the case; unable to continue speaking, he has to leave the court.

[5] In the end, Hitchcock pushed for Gregory Peck, then at the peak of his box-office appeal; Ann Todd was borrowed from the Rank Organisation to play his wife; and Selznick settled on Alida Valli, considered one of the more promising actresses in the Italian cinema for Mrs.

In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock said that he and his wife Alma Reville wrote the first draft of the script together, before bringing in Scottish playwright James Bridie to do some polishing, but that Selznick, dissatisfied with the result, would view the previous day's rushes, do a rewrite, and send the new scenes to the set to be shot.

[5] This set-up, including elaborately choreographed crane shots, allowed Hitchcock to shoot longer takes of about ten minutes, something he would push to the limit on his next two films, Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).

Selznick maintained close supervision on the production, and interfered with Hitchcock's normally carefully budgeted process by demanding extensive re-takes.

[10] The Paradine Case opened December 29, 1947, in Los Angeles and in two theaters across the street from each other in Westwood, California[5] followed by its New York City premiere on January 8, 1948.

[3][better source needed] The Paradine Case was not a box office success, worldwide receipts barely covering half of the cost of production.

Alida Valli, an import from Italy, makes the caged Mrs. Paradine a compound of mystery, fascination and voluptuousness with a pair of bedroom eyes, and Louis Jourdan, a new boy from Paris, is electric as the badgered valet.