Ultimately, Family Plot may be more fun to think about than to see—or at least, to see for the fourth time. There are moments of quite stunning intensity…. But some of the principle action sequences seem relatively lax and unfocused, and I suspect that Family Plot figures only half-heartedly as an adventure film. Indeed, it mistrusts adventure, as the best Hitchcock movies often do. Its central position is that a healthy respect for love and money offers better guidance through this vale of tears than does the secret shudder down the spine of life lived recklessly for beauty and thrills. That's practical philosophy. Like Bresson, like Ozu, Hitchcock constructs a cinema of philosophic principles.

In this respect, Family Plot, which some have praised for its hilarity, may just be Hitchcock's most serious movie—or one of his most serious, or anything but his funniest and most erotic...