The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Film: The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Stars: Virginia Valli, Carmelita Geraghty, Miles Mander, John Stuart, Karl Falkenberg

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: Pre-dated the Academy Awards

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

(Throughout the year, in connection with our 'Saturdays with the Stars' series, I am watching every gap I have in Alfred Hitchcock's filmography in what we're calling 'Sunday Leftovers.'  Every two weeks, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

Welcome, my friends to our first installment of "Sunday Leftovers," a series that is a one-time(?) companion to our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Every other week throughout the remainder of 2021, I will be watching one Alfred Hitchcock movie (chronologically) that I've never seen before, with the goal being that by the end-of-2021 I will have seen every one of the Master of Suspense's feature films.  We'll only be watching films that I've never seen before, and we won't be duplicating any of our 'Saturdays' viewings (every month we're taking a look at the career of one of Hitch's leading ladies), so I'll call out if we're skipping any because I've already seen it, but this week we start at the very beginning, and I see, for the first time, the very first movie to have Hitchcock get credit behind the camera: The Pleasure Garden.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is part rags-to-riches, part melodrama, and part cautionary tale.  Like many future Hitchcock films, it features two women: Patsy (Valli) and Jill (Geraghty), both dancers in London who hope to find love & fame on the stage.  Jill is the more successful of the two dancers, and nearly doesn't get a job with Patsy in the show (Patsy takes care of her & gives her a room to stay in at the beginning of the movie), but she quickly gains fame & admirers, including Prince Ivan (Falkenberg), and in the process dismisses her noble fiancé Hugh (Stuart) and scorns Patsy, who marries a philanderer named Levet (Mander), who regularly cheats on her with a woman he meets in Africa.  The film's ending has a dark twist, with Jill largely successful in marrying the prince (though she continues to scorn Patsy), but Levet being killed after he murders his mistress (after she refuses to let him go back to his wife), and Hugh & Patsy living happily-ever-after, the only two morally upright characters in the picture.

The movie is his first, so it's not clear how much creative control he had, but there are hints of future scenes in his film's everywhere.  Particularly a sequence where a perverted older man uses opera glasses to get a better look at a young blond dancer reeks of Rear Window, and the two women (one good, one bad) competing against each other while also frenemies has hints of Stage Fright.  Also, leave it to Hitch to have a cute dog named Cuddles basically steal the whole movie.

The film's spirit is odd-but-works in the action-packed final third, as we get to see the murderous Levet haunted by an old mistress & his past betrayal (again, another Hitchcock motif), but the romance between Patsy & Hugh was rather bland.  Despite Valli being the bigger star at the time, it's Geraghty who gets the better part.  Jill is diabolical fun, and it's nice to be in the pre-Code where she's not punished for liking sex & money (though there's little closure with her character in the last act).  I saw the 60-minute version of this film (there appears to be a longer version, but I couldn't get a copy of it-anyone who has, let me know if we get more resolution with Jill's story arch).  Overall, it's a fun little movie-nothing super special compared to his later work, but a decent cautionary tale with hints of what Hitchcock would later produce.