“The Manxman” (1929)
An adaptation of an 1890s novel by Hall Caine that was an absolute blockbuster at the time (but is now essentially forgotten), “The Manxman” marks not only the director’s last silent film (his next picture, “Blackmail” was remade as a sound version), but also one of his last ventures into full-on melodrama. Set on the Isle of Man (but filmed in Cornwall — ironically enough, tax breaks now mean that the Isle of Man is a popular U.K. film location), it’s a fairly creaky old-fashioned tale of two lifelong friends, fisherman Pete (Carl Brisson) and lawyer Philip (Malcolm Keen), who fall for the same woman, Kate (Anny Ondra). Pete proposes first, but when he goes off to seek his fortune in Africa, he asks Philip to look after her. The pair fall in love, marry and have a child when they believe Pete to be dead, only for the prodigal fiance to return alive and well. Yes, it’s essentially the plot of “Pearl Harbor” (and was pretty rote in the 1920s, so you’d think a 21st century screenwriter would have tried a little harder…) The locations are stunning, DoP Jack E. Cox pulling off perhaps his finest work with Hitch, and there’s some very nifty editing, but despite that, and a beguiling performance from Hungarian actress Ondra (who’d go on to marry legendary boxer Max Schmeling), it’s one of the director’s least memorable films of the era. The performances by Brisson and Keen are quite ropey, the morality feels finger-wagging, and Hitch ultimately feels a bit disinterested. Worth watching for the visuals (a gorgeous new restoration just premiered at the London Film Festival), but its place outside of the canon is mostly deserved. [C]
“Blackmail” (1929)
It’s often asserted that the early days of talking pictures saw a regression of filmic technique from the fluidity of the late ‘20s in order to accommodate the cumbersome logistics of recording sound on set. But whether “Blackmail,” Hitchcock’s first talkie, proves or disproves that rule is up for debate. Because “Blackmail,” after its cronky, silent and weirdly procedural first 8 minutes, is pretty great, and arguably marks a high watermark in Hitch’s early filmography, but it was planned as a silent — in fact, a silent version, which required some reshooting, was also released, as many theaters hadn’t yet installed sound equipment. Perhaps as a result, and probably more successfully than Hitch’s next few films, it managed to straddle that awkward changeover period with fewer major compromises of its visual style. So we get some lovely expressionistic moments, like a shadow falling across our heroine’s neck like a noose and a climactic chase through the British Museum, which are Hitchcockian before that was even a thing. What’s more surprising is that even though this was the director’s first time out with sound, there are moments of invention. In a technique that is basically the sonic equivalent of a subjective shot to show a character’s mental state, the chatter of a neighbour becomes reduced to background noise with just the word “knife” jumping out distinctly every time she says it, putting us inside the guilty mind of our protagonist. The plot: pretty but petulant Alice is the victim of an attempted rape during which she grabs a knife (knife…knife…knife) and kills her attacker. Her boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective, finds her glove at the scene and realises her involvement, but so does a shady blackmailer who tracks her to the shop her father runs, where a nasty parlour game plays out between the three of them and her unwitting parents. Anny Ondra is terrific in selling Alice’s transition from silly, flirty shopgirl to almost catatonically fearful killer, a performance all the more remarkable because her accent was deemed unfit for the audience’s ears. And in the era before post-dubbing was possible, she instead mouthed her lines while another actress offscreen spoke them aloud. Hitch even gets in a little sly humor: Alice defends the authenticity of a new crime film out in theaters saying, “I heard they got a real criminal to direct it, just to be on the safe side.” It’s a fun ride, an important milestone for Hitch, oh, and all those people who like to say that “Vertigo” is the only Hitchcock where the killer gets away with it? They’re wrong… [B]
Hitchcock Cameo: A great one, and unusually lengthy, at about 20 seconds, you can see him being annoyed by a child reading a book on the tube, at the 10:25 mark.
“Juno & The Paycock” (1930)
Now that it was an option, Hitchcock leapt at the chance to tackle something positively packed with dialogue, and so for his first post-“Blackmail” project, he selected “Juno & The Paycock,” an adaptation of the classic stage play by one of Ireland’s most beloved playwrights, Sean O’Casey (and known as “The Shame Of Mary Boyle” in the U.S., for reasons lost to the mists of time). The plot revolves around the Dublin Boyle family — Captain Boyle (Edward Chapman), Juno (Sara Allgood), Mary (Kathleen O’Regan) and Johnny (John Laurie) — who are told by English solicitor Mr. Bentham (John Longden) that they’re due to become wealthy from an inheritance. The family celebrate, spending before it comes in, but it turns out that Mr. Bentham made the whole thing up, and the family are broke, Mary is left pregnant and Johnny is killed by the IRA for shopping a colleague to the authorities. It takes a sure hand to handle the play’s shift from comedy to tragedy (there was a terrific production a few years ago at London’s National Theatre starring Ciaran Hinds), but it’s not really to be found here, unfortunately. Hitchcock seems to be so enamored of being able to record dialogue that he forgets to do much but simply shoot a stage play, and many of the performers seem to forget that they’re acting for camera, going for broad caricatures rather than real people. The result is that when the gut-punch conclusion comes, it’s ultimately ineffective. We certainly regard it among the bottom rung of Hitchcock’s pictures, but you can see for yourself — the whole film’s available to watch on YouTube.[D+]
“Murder!” (1930)
HItchcock wasn’t much of a fan of the whodunnit genre, complaining that it “contains no emotion,” but he did make one exception, with this 1930 thriller. Serving as something of a love-letter to the theater world, like the later “Stage Fright,” and like his other 1930 film “Juno and the Paycock,” an adaptation of a play, it sees Diana Baring (Norah Baring), an actress, accused of murdering a colleague and set for the noose. But one juror, Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall), himself from the theater world, isn’t convinced of her guilt, and sets out to investigate the crime. It’s a fairly ridiculous set-up and like in ‘Juno,’ the director’s still finding it difficult to escape the stage origins of his material. But the signs are there that he’s starting to work it out with an impressive opening tracking shot, a lingering shot of the jury room, empty, while the verdict is delivered, and the superimposition of the victim’s face on the real killer as they hang themselves (the film also contains one major innovation; the first recorded use of voiceover to suggest internal monologue). And there’s some intriguing subtext in the motivations of the villain, which gives things some psychological depth, and a little camp value. It’s a reasonable watch, but probably interesting more as evidence of Hitch’s development as a director, and of the medium, than as a film itself. It’s worth noting that Hitchcock simultaneously shot a German-language version, “Mary” on the same sets with German actors — it was released in 1931. [C+]
Hitchcock Cameo: At the one hour mark, walking past the murder scene.