Movie Videos: : Reviews of feature films new on video this weekend (unless otherwise noted.)

*** 1/2”The Paradine Case.” Key. $19.95.

Often dismissed as an Alfred Hitchcock failure--even by Hitchcock, who had to cast Gregory Peck, Alida Valli and Louis Jourdan in roles he’d wanted for Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo and Robert Newton--this high-sheen psychological drama from 1948 looks more fascinating in retrospect. It’s a polished, verbose tale, adapted by producer David Selznick from Robert Hichens’ novel of repressed passion exploding out in a sensational trial--and a good man (barrister Peck) succumbing to mad passion for his client (Valli), who’s accused of murdering her blind husband. There are no conventional suspense set-pieces, but the cutting is masterful and the highly charged trial scenes are staged and played like a mixture of Restoration Comedy and grand opera. In them, Charles Laughton, as a lecherous judge, is triumphant: one of Hitchcock’s most incisive portrayals of institutional evil.