The Ring (1927)

Film: The Ring (1927)

Stars: Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, Ian Hunter

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

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)

We continue our series of "Sunday leftovers" with another Hitchcock film from his Silent Movie Era (we'll actually be here for quite a bit longer-Hitch made a handful of movies from 1927-29).  As I mentioned earlier this week, we won't be seeing The Mountain Eagle, Hitch's second feature-length film as it is the only one of his full-length movies considered "lost," and we'll actually be skipping The Lodger as well.  I'm only profiling films that I haven't seen before 2021, and The Lodger (a creepy, good film, probably his most celebrated of this era & one that would be a harbinger for much of his later work) was the only one of his movie's I'd seen from the 1920's.  So we move on now to The Ring, our next picture.  Technically The Ring was the fifth film that Hitchcock made, but it was released fourth so we're going with that (we'll get to the other film that would compete for this slot in two weeks).  The Ring, despite coming after The Lodger, deals with topics that Hitchcock didn't always put into his movies.  The film has no thriller or horror elements, and is in fact a relatively straight-forward boxing love triangle, one of the earliest pugilist films (inarguably the cinema's most-loved sport).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, as I said above, is a love story, though an atypical one.  Jack (Brisson) is a circus boxer who is famous for being able to win any match in "one round," (he has that as his nickname), and is romancing Mabel (Hall-Davis) the ticket girl smitten with her he-man boyfriend.  When Bob Corby (Hunter) is able to beat Jack in the ring, it's a shock until his identity is revealed: he's the Australian heavyweight champion, and sees a lot of potential in Jack as his sparring partner.  Bob also sees potential in a romance with Mabel, and while Jack marries a reluctant Mabel early in the film (the wedding scene has the comic effect of a two-headed woman and the world's tallest man showing up in front of a bewildered priest...which is kind of hilarious & the sort of visual gag a cheeky Hitchcock would throw in later films), she continues her affair with Bob, which causes a rift in their marriage.  Eventually Jack decides the only way to win back Mabel is by beating Bob in the ring, which he does in the final scenes of the movie after working his way up the ranks of the boxing world, becoming the champion & officially taking Mabel's heart forever.

The Ring is quite distinct in that it's the only (credited) script that Alfred Hitchcock wrote from scratch (he'd adapt a few later, but always from books or plays), and you can tell he genuinely loves the story as for a silent movie it's quite detailed & legible as a plot.  You could add dialogue here & have to change very little.  The film's politics are problematic, both racially (the n-word shows up in a title card with a nonchalance that will make you wince), and sexually (Mabel is a one-dimensional trope, unusual for Hitchcock with female characters, who is only interested in whichever man comes out on top), but if you can move past that there's some good here.

After all, for a 90-minute (longer than most of Hitch's movies until this point) film it's brisk, and it's lensed well.  The boxing scenes at the end were clearly a template for future films, and there are great comic bits in an otherwise dramatic movie from side characters & visual cues at the circus.  I didn't love it (it's been a while since I've seen it, but I'd put The Lodger above this in Hitchcock's pantheon), but it's a reminder that a great director can do wonders with virtually any script, particularly his own, if he has a vision in mind.