The Skin Game (1931)

Film: The Skin Game (1931)

Stars: CV France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longden, Phyllis Konstam

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

I love the films of Alfred Hitchcock, but I am learning as we're going along with this Sunday Leftovers series that watching a man's full filmography, particularly when he has a robust early filmography, can be a bit demanding (which is why we are consistently running late on this series).  Hitchcock's filmography makes this demanding in a strange way for me because so many of his films take place in the early Sound Era, which is my least favorite time frame for film.  While there are great sound movies during this period (King Kong, Dinner at Eight, Duck Soup), from 1927-33 I am generally wishing that the movies had just shut up (particularly considering how the best Silent Era movies took place in the late-1920's).  This is personified with The Skin Game, a movie with an intriguing plot, but one that gets totally glossed by in the early sound technology.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two feuding families: the Hillcrists, Jack (France) and Ivy (Haye, and it's Helen Haye-not Oscar-winner Helen Hayes, though their remarkably similar names had me thrown off as well), who are a longtime upper class family in the English countryside, and the nouveau riche Hornblowers, including their patriarch Mr. Hornblower (Gwenn), his son Charles (Longden), and his pregnant daughter-in-law Chloe (Konstam).  The Hornblowers are buying up much of the land around the Hillcrists, obstructing their view by putting up factories.  When one last parcel of land is up-for-sale, they get into a bidding war that leads to the Hornblowers winning the land, but before they can do anything with the property, Ivy has a catch-she knows that Chloe used to be a prostitute, and as a result she blackmails Hornblower into causing a scandal for his family (and incoming grandchild) if they put up factories.  They swear an oath not to say anything in exchange for the land remaining untouched, but Chloe's guilt & the gossip this stirs up is too much for her, and she kills herself.  Angered by the Hillcrists' blackmail killing his future grandchild, Hornblower goes back on the deal, destroying the last views of the Hillcrist estate.

There's something fascinating in this movie, I'm not going to lie, as it's a good plot.  I love stories about the minutia of rich people, and how you can use seemingly silly things (like a parcel of land & the view it provides) and turn it into a much more dire set of circumstances (i.e. the reputation & life of a young woman).  Hitchcock even tries to preserve the majesty this had in previous iterations by hiring Gwenn & Haye, both of whom were in the 1921 silent version of this picture.  The late scenes where Gwenn, a fine actor then as well as later (he'd eventually win an Oscar for Miracle on 34th Street) tells off the Hillcrists & promises revenge, are solid stage work.

But this isn't a play, and huge stretches of the film are exceedingly dull.  The auction scene goes on at a glacial pace, and doesn't have the excitement it would have if this film was made a decade later, and the dialogue becomes interchangeable between, say, Chloe and the Hillcrists' daughter Jill.  Combine in that Chloe's prostitution isn't actually mentioned (though it's heavily implied for anyone who can remotely read between the lines), and there feels like 30% of the film just having shocked people trying not to say Chloe's "sin."  As a result, what might have been a great film gets bogged down as Hitchcock (like nearly all directors of this era) trying to capture what sound-in-film would feel like.  As a result, The Skin Game becomes like many Hitchcock movies of this era-only necessary if you're a completionist.

Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Film: Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Stars: Marie O'Neill, Edward Chapman, Sidney Morgan, Sara Allgood, John Laurie, Kathleen O'Regan, Barry Fitzgerald

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

One of the recurring themes I've realized as we have done this "Sunday Leftovers" series about Hitchcock, specifically looking at the films I hadn't seen, is that early in his career Hitchcock had a wide variety of effort that he put into what feels like (in retrospect) "director-for-hire" work.  Generally I find that some of his work that is clearly not something he was "invested in" becomes pretty generic.  This is most evident with a movie like Juno and the Paycock, generally considered to be one of Hitch's least representative films, one of his least-known pictures, and well, one of his worst.  I honestly had no idea going into the movie what to expect, but was a bit confused by the weird tonal shifts between comedy & drama the film takes, and the revolving door of main characters & focus.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie initially is centered around Captain Boyle (Chapman), who is a roustabout who lives in Dublin with his long-suffering wife Juno (Allgood), who refers to him as a "paycock" (meant to be a peacock) because he's "useless and vain."  They have two children, Johnny (Laurie) and Mary (O'Regan), Johnny being handicapped and (unbeknownst to his family) a traitor to the Anti-Treaty side of the war, as he's just sold out a supporter who was subsequently killed, and Mary being a good girl engaged to a local bloke.  Their lives change when a solicitor comes to tell them that a relative of the Captain's has left him a small fortune, which changes all of their lives.  The Captain & Juno buy fancy things for the house, they brag to all of their friends about their recent fortune, and Mary dumps her boyfriend for the handsome solicitor.  When it turns out that the inheritance isn't coming due to a clerical error, their lives are town asunder as all have lived without control in a way that only money can save them from.

This is a weird movie, because until the point of them losing their inheritance, it's intended to be a comedy, though it's not funny.  The movie is filled with long acts, with Hitchcock basically setting up a camera and filming it like a taped stage play (it is based on a play, for the record), and unless you're into a specific brand of dated Irish humor, you're not going to be into this story (I wasn't).  This all changes when the inheritance runs dry though, as it suddenly becomes a cautionary drama.  Johnny is found out by the IRA (and subsequently killed), the Captain has to give back all of his belongings & ends up in total ruin, and Mary reveals that she's pregnant with the solicitor's baby, and as he's run off, she's going to become an unwed mother.  The film ends in a bizarre place where Mary & Juno are trying to come to terms with their faith, leaving their fates to God, and basically just disregarding the Captain from their lives...except the Captain himself has not died or even left them, he's just not around for the final act.

This sort of inconsistency doesn't work for me, but it's throughout the film.  The opening scene has Barry Fitzgerald playing an assassinated orator for pretty much no reason.  Though he's the most recognizable figure in the film today, this was his first film at the time, so I get why he has a small part, but it's never really explained as to his significance to the story.  On stage, Fitzgerald played the Captain, and I kind of wish he would here as there's a lacking in charisma from Chapman in the role.  But overall, this movie reads as a genuine mess, and if there are Hitchcockian touches, I certainly didn't find them lounging in this rubble.  Next week we're going to watch a film called Murder!, which I know nothing about other than the title, but I'm going to feel much more confident this is up Hitch's alley.

Blackmail (1929)

Film: Blackmail (1929)

Stars: Anny Ondra, John Longden, Cyril Ritchard, Donald Calthrop

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

As I mentioned last week, Hitchcock is officially entering the Sound Era with this week's Sunday Leftovers, never to return back to silent pictures.  Blackmail, though, wasn't just the first moment for Hitchcock in the Sound Era, but in fact the first sound film, period from British cinema, making it the historic equivalent in the UK to what The Jazz Singer is to American audiences.  As I've mentioned on here a couple of times, The Jazz Singer is not a good movie, a reputation pretty much everyone who discusses it admits, even if the film itself is an inescapable part of film history if you're a completionist.  Blackmail, however, still enjoys a solid reputation amongst both Hitchcock enthusiasts and film fans in general, so I was curious what it would entail, particularly as the title indicated we were headed into Hitchcock's strong suit.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Alice White (Ondra), whose boyfriend Detective Frank Webber (Longden) has just gotten into a fight with her.  As a result, she storms off, perhaps to make him jealous or perhaps just to see what else is out there, with Mr. Crewe (Ritchard), an artist.  While they are flirty together, it's quickly clear that Mr. Crewe has other intentions, and though it happens off-screen, it's pretty evident in the movie that he intends to rape Alice...until she pulls out a knife and kills him.  She quickly tries to cover up her crime, but forgets her gloves in the studio.  When the body is found the next day, Frank is one of the detectives on the case and finds one of Alice's gloves, and goes to talk to her (where she neither confirms nor denies her involvement in Crewe's death).  Meanwhile, a local man called Tracy (Calthrop) finds the other glove, and soon starts to blackmail the two, assuming they are covering up for each other in terms of the death.  Frank tries to reverse and say they'll blame Tracy, a former felon.  This causes a chase, and in the process, Tracy dies, with everyone assuming he's the killer.  In the end Alice does confess to Frank the real cause of the crime (that it was self-defense), and they live happily ever after...though with the canvas that Alice painted with Mr. Crewe still in evidence, a permanent admission to her involvement in the death.

The film, like a number of films in 1929, was originally intended to be silent (if you look hard enough you can apparently find silent versions of the picture, though I saw the sound one for this review).  You can see this in that the dialogue does feel ancillary to the plot-much of the movie is about visual storytelling.  What's great here, though, is that Hitchcock is given giant leeway with the plot.  The story of Alice's self-defense reads as shocking, and though the word "rape" doesn't get uttered in the picture, it hangs so ferociously it might as well have.  I'm curious as we get into the rest of Hitch's pre-Code films in the coming weeks how often he uses this looser, more jaw-dropping ability to amplify his script to his advantage.  I also loved Hitchcock's use of the British Museum for the chase sequence, foreshadowing everything from Mt. Rushmore to the Golden Gate Bridge in future pictures (the man loved his monuments).

This is a tightly-scripted film otherwise.  Short, without much fat on the plot, it works well.  Like all prototypical films (it's clear that Blackmail influenced not just Hitchcock's later films, but everyone from Fritz Lang to Michael Powell (the latter of whom worked on the picture for their on-set publicity photography), it reads as a bit provincial to modern audiences, mostly because you know that something better would be coming out of this (like The Lady Vanishes or Notorious), but this is an impressive sound debut from Hitchcock, even if much of the film's strength still resides in silent movie techniques.

The Manxman (1929)

Film: The Manxman (1929)

Stars: Carl Brisson, Malcolm Keen, Anny Ondra

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

We are hitting a precipice in our Sunday Leftovers season on Alfred Hitchcock today.  For months we have been focusing on Hitch's Silent Era films, the many movies he made before he became, well, "HITCHCOCK."  This week we are still in the Silent Era, but we are in the final Silent Era picture of the Master of Suspense's career.  Next week we will enter the sound era (as will all of British cinema, in what is generally considered to be the first British talking picture) with Blackmail, but today we need to talk about yet another sudsy romance when Hitch was still something of a (prominent) director for hire: The Manxman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is essentially a (very messy) love triangle tale.  Pete (Brisson) and Philip (Keen) are best friends from different walks of life; Pete is a broke, handsome fisherman while Philip is a middle-class lawyer that could become the city's chief magistrate if he plays his cards right.  They both fall for Kate (Ondra), the daughter of a local pub owner.  Initially Pete is rejected when Kate's father doesn't want her marrying some poor schlub, but she promises to wait for him while he's off making his fortune.  While he's away, Philip & Kate fall in love, though both are reluctant to acknowledge their passionate affair since they are betraying Pete's trust.  When Pete returns, he is rich & Kate's father insists she marry him, but her heart belongs to Philip, and soon we learn it's more than her heart he's gained access to, as she's pregnant with their love child.  When the baby girl is born, Kate leaves Pete, who is bereft but takes solace in fatherhood, but when Philip won't acknowledge their love affair, Kate attempts to kill herself.  This all leads to a court case where Philip confesses that he has made Kate a "lost woman" and must step down as chief magistrate.  The film ends on a dour note, with Philip & Kate getting their daughter, but their lives upended & ruined by scandal, while Pete goes out into the sea once again with nothing, his wife & daughter lost to him forever.

The movie is too long-I think there are different cuts of the picture, but I definitely got the one that is nearly two hours.  The plot gets repetitive, and while there is a lot of juice in this plum in terms of sudsy storylines, they start to peter at the hour mark.  This is honestly more to do with Ondra than anything.  It's not clear early on why she prefers Philip to Pete.  Keen is utterly charmless as Philip, and well, Pete is an affable hunk.  You don't get the sense that she's after Philip initially for her money or his prestige, particularly since it's not clear she cares a lick when Pete comes back and is even richer than Philip.  Her motivations are so core to the film that I felt lost at times since she wasn't giving us much intuition into how she saw Kate, and in silent films, subtle acting is not your friend.

That said, Brisson is excellent as Pete.  He plays the guy as this lug-headed himbo, and honestly, it's one of my favorite performances we've seen so far this year for Sunday Leftovers.  He's such a sweetheart, and has a sort of Chris Pratt vibe going for most of the film.  You see his final break, when he realizes that Kate has betrayed him, and he doesn't react with anger, but more sorrow & confusion.  This is a nice change-of-pace for an era where the jilted husband would most-often come armed with a gun rather than a broken heart, and it's a nice modern touch that doesn't ruin what is the movie's best asset.

Champagne (1928)

Film: Champagne (1928)

Stars: Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, Gordon Harker, Ferdinand von Alten

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

Today in "Sunday Leftovers" we're hitting our penultimate Hitchcock silent feature.  Hitchcock would continue to make films outside the thriller genre throughout the early 1930's, so we aren't going to be saying goodbye to his formative years quite yet, but as today's Champagne proves, Hitchcock wasn't adept at everything.  Champagne is a weird movie, and we'll get into some of the reasons why below, but it's also the second comedy that the Master of Suspense would make (though not his last, as we discussed during our month devoted to Carole Lombard).  The first one, The Farmer's Wife was okay if a bit misguided.  Champagne feels more experimental than that picture, but also less successful, particularly when it comes to, well, comedy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Betty (Balfour), a spoiled heiress who is jetting across the world and crashing an airliner just to rendezvous with her boyfriend (Bradin), against her wealthy father Mark's (Harker) wishes.  The two are planning on eloping, even as Betty is pursued by a mysterious man (von Alten), but when her father comes aboard the ship, he tells her that he's lost his fortune, and they are now broke.  Betty's boyfriend leaves in the confusion, and Betty then assumes he was just a fortune-hunter.  Betty & Mark start living in poverty, with Betty attempting to make the best of it, though Mark's behavior seems to indicate that he might be tricking Betty.  This proves to be the case when Betty gets a job selling flowers at a night club (there's a firm hint this is going to be, if not prostitution, at least an escort situation), and both the boyfriend & dad come to tell Betty that this was a ruse to get Betty to be more serious, and her fortune isn't loss.  Betty runs off with the mysterious man, who it seems at first is going to kidnap her, when suddenly we realize that he is also in on the ruse, and was on the ship to stop Betty from marrying her boyfriend, who now that her dad also thinks he's worthy, she'll marry.

The plot reads as messed up because it is.  Betty is not a particularly good person in the first ten minutes of the picture, but for the remainder of the film she's basically gaslit by the men in her life, trying to manipulate her into being exactly who they think a woman should be.  Considering she takes her father losing his fortune in stride & gets a job right away (and is promptly slut-shamed for it), she's a better person than all of them and deserves to let them rot, for my money.  The film's comedy elements are also pretty sparse, and the treatment of Betty to a modern audience doesn't read as comedy.  The flagrant sexism of The Farmer's Wife is broad enough that even if it's problematic, you still see the humor motifs on display.  Champagne doesn't do that, though, and as a result it's a comedy without any laughs.

I will say, to its credit, that Hitchcock is clearly getting his footing in the first twenty minutes, and you almost think you're about to see a different movie.  The mysterious man and the woman headed for danger are classic plots of his later films, and would've worked better in a straight drama.  I also loved the cinematography in the scenes with the plane & the ship, even if I found them a bit confusing (it wasn't entirely clear what was happening in the early scenes-I saw an earlier cut of the film rather than the restored version, so this might work better in the 104-minute version).  But nice camera work doesn't get around that this movie is a snooze.

Easy Virtue (1928)

Film: Easy Virtue (1928)

Stars: Isabel Jeans, Robin Irvine, Franklin Dyall, Eric Bransby Williams, Enid Stamp Taylor

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

We are back!  We have slowly, but steadily after my brief hiatus in early July been reintroducing all of our series, and we are back with our final missing series "Sunday Leftovers" today.  For those unfamiliar, I have been chronologically watching all of the Hitchcock films that I haven't seen before and that aren't part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  I have timed this well so that we have exactly enough Sundays left to match the number of Hitchcock films that I haven't seen, so we are going to be doing a late-night article today to make sure we stay on track.  Each Sunday for the rest of the year my plan is to get another missing Hitchcock film, so we'll end the year with his whole filmography completed.  Today, we're going to be back in the Silent Era with Eaty Virtue, based on a play by Noel Coward.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts in something of a strange manner, with a courtroom scene between two figures we don't yet know (I was confused at first, thinking that perhaps a scene was lost on my DVD, but this is how it was meant to be filmed).  We soon learn that Larita Filton (Jeans) is on trial for a divorce, as her jealous ex Aubrey (Dyall) shot a man named Claude (Williams) who had made a pass at her, and he gets away with this violence even though Larita had no intention of romancing Claude.  Larita leaves, disgraced, and moves to the French Riviera where she exists under an assumed name to avoid the press.  She meets a man named John Whittaker (Irvine), who falls for her, but when they impetuously marry, his family doesn't approve of Larita, and John doesn't know about Larita's secret past.  John's mother slowly poisons her son against Larita, and soon he openly is hoping for a divorce.  When they figure out the scandal, Larita says she has no need to apologize, but in the end grants John an uncontested divorce.  The film ends with Larita single again, but this time not fleeing from the photographers, proclaiming that she has nothing left for them to destroy.

We are still in the era where Hitchcock was making domestic dramas that didn't lean into his thriller tendencies that we know so well.  This isn't an era where he hadn't started doing them, mind you (his iconic The Lodger had already come out), but he was still making films that aren't in his obvious wheelhouse.  About the closest we get to a natural Hitchcock angle is Larita, a woman with a terrible secret who is being pursued by a clueless man (which is the background of a lot of his pictures).

But Hitchcock weirdly doesn't know how to handle this scandal.  It doesn't help that divorce, more than any other taboo from early cinema, isn't remotely forbidden today.  Though obviously a murder would get headlines in any era, the scandal of being divorced certainly wouldn't, and so Larita's sins play differently to a modern audience.  But it's also strange because it's not clear whether or not Hitchcock thinks Larita should be punished.  The story reads as a woman caught in a difficult scenario, inviting sympathy, but the ending also has her miserable & alone, starting over honestly but still without a man or the kindness she deserved.  The title of "easy virtue" doesn't really jive with this treatment of Larita, and as a result the movie feels disjointed.

The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Film: The Farmer's Wife (1928)

Stars: Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Gibb McLaughlin, Maud Gill, Louie Pounds, Olga Slade

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 are continuing on our look at the films of Alfred Hitchcock's early career with The Farmer's Wife, yet another silent film (we'll finish up his Silent Era by the end of April), and this one outside what we typically associate with Hitchcock.  While the director has a lot of humorous imagery & was a practical joker offset (sometimes crossing the line into harassment), Hitchcock is not a director we normally associate with screen comedy.  His early works ran the gamut across genres, but generally he is most known for suspense, horror, or straight drama.  That wasn't always the case, though, as we find out with The Farmer's Wife, which isn't just humorous-the film is meant to be a straight up humorous film, and some ninety years later actually succeeds in that regard.

(Spoilers Ahead) Samuel Sweetland (Thomas) has just lost his wife, and his grown daughter (recently wed) is intent on finding him a new wife to help run the farm & take care of him.  Sweetland makes a list of local widows & spinsters, but finds that as he starts to court them that they aren't as interested in his romantic advances as he is in them.  One by one, the four women he initially listed as a match for himself declines the offer, saying he is too controlling, too old, just a bad match.  This hurts his pride, and makes those around him, including his farmhand, ashamed of him having no self-respect & basically just giving himself away to no one who wants him.  However, Minta (Hall-Davis), his housekeeper, doesn't see a pitiable figure, but a man she's desperately in love with, and as the film ends (with one of the women who rejected him coming back to state that he changed his mind), Samuel marries Minta, and they live happily ever after.

The film's plot is kind of funny, and not just wry like Hitchcock usually goes, but actually intended to be properly funny.  So atypical is it that Hitch doesn't even make one of his trademark cameos.  This makes it feel like a bit of a cheat compared to some of the other work we've profiled, as for a director that made everything part of his "signature" this gives off the vibes of a "job for hire" which at this point in his career Hitchcock didn't really need to be taking (after the success of The Lodger).

That said, it's a good movie.  The scenes where Samuel is brought down a peg by these women are kind of a riot.  All (admittedly handsome) machismo, he deserves some of the comeuppance he gets, and while it is unkind in retrospect, Olga Slade steals the movie as a stout, high-on-herself postmistress who refuses Samuel for being too old, though clearly she, like him, has perhaps too high of expectations for herself.  Overall, this is a strange movie, and the picture that feels the least like the Hitchcock we all love, but it's a film that stands up on its own.

Downhill (1927)

Film: Downhill (1927)

Stars: Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Norman McKinnel, Robin Irvine, Annette Benson

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 are continuing on our look at the film's of Alfred Hitchcock, and are still (despite the fact that we're in March) in his Silent Era, a place we'll be for at least a couple more weeks-I haven't checked & want to be surprised when we move to sound).  This week's film is once again not a thriller or horror film in any way, though perhaps our lead character might characterize it as such his vantage point.  Hitchcock two films after his breakout success with The Lodger was not yet "Hitchcock!" and as we talked about yesterday, it wasn't until The Lady Vanishes in 1938 that Hitch would become the "Master of Suspense," moving to Hollywood and basically getting to write his own ticket for the rest of his career.  That doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't signature touches from the director, or that this isn't a good film, because it is.  For my money this is our best "Sunday Leftovers" screening so far.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts out with something of an unusual premise, and one that doesn't quite hold water to a modern viewer, even if it would've at the time.  Roddy (Novello) is a champion student & athlete at his prestigious boarding school, while Tim (Irvine), his best friend, is a poorer student there on scholarship who lives in his shadow.  When the two boys meet Mabel (Benson), a "promiscuous" waitress, Tim sleeps with her getting her pregnant (or is she pregnant...the film is never quite sure about that which is where the "holding water" for me doesn't work since this isn't confirmed?), but Roddy claims the child so that Tim doesn't leave school, since Tim can't afford expulsion like Roddy can (him being wealthy).  Unfortunately for Roddy, his father is humiliated & fights with Roddy, who then leaves the house on principle, working first as an actor, and then after an unsuccessful marriage that bankrupts him, as a male gigolo.  He is at death's door before some friends ship him back to his home, hoping for a reward in the process, and Roddy comes to his old house, where his parents (who understand what he had done now) welcome him back with open arms.

Downhill is a dark film with a happy ending.  The movie shows the ways that one man's decision to behave honorably can impact his life forever.  Roddy repeatedly throughout the film behaves the way we think he should-he helps his friend, he believes his wife, he defends his honor-but is constantly punished for it, which is pretty bleak for a film of the 1920's, and almost certainly would've been difficult to do a in a post-code era.  The film is also one of the earliest films (along with The Lodger) where Hitchcock cast a queer man in the lead role (we'd see this later with Farley Granger, John Dall, and if Hollywood legend is to be believed, Cary Grant), and Hitchcock uses that.  Novello exudes a pretty gay man quality with his expressive, sensitive eyes, and while the older women he's romancing as a gigolo are women on the screen, having them appear overtly masculine gets across the point that Hitchcock is trying to make here.

Downhill has a lot of cool artistic choices, using shadow-and-light in the ways that were popular with German expressionists like FW Murnau & Robert Wiene at the time, and it's a compelling narrative.  I liked the movie-I thought Novello was excellent in the lead role, even if he's forced to learn a lesson that doesn't feel fair (though the fact that Hitchcock never acknowledges that isn't fair is a true sense of realism in the picture).  Though its treatment of women is super problematic, the movie otherwise has aged pretty well, and while it's not his most famous silent film, it's one of his better ones for my money.

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.

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.