Champagne (1928) - Alfred Hitchcock

In 1927 came to cinema one of its greatest revolutions with The Jazz Singer, the sound arrived, silent films passed into history, many changes, imperishable changes, came to stay, challenging all masters and maestros of silent films. Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, had his beginnings in those crucial moments for the history of cinema, beginning his career in the last years of the silent film stage, and the film that concerns us now is one of his final exercises in that stage. Were the initial moments of great Hitch, was still discovering his style, and after directing The farmer's wife and Easy Virtue, both also from 1928, the British resumed an almost unprecedented way during his extensive cinematic journey, Hitch directs a comedy. As it was a constant in most of his career, the filmmaker adapts a originally literary narrative, in this case authored by Walter C. Mycroft, in which a whimsical girl, daughter of a billionaire, defying his father, runs away from home to marry her boyfriend, whom her father disapproves, meeting with the young man on a cruise; naturally upset, the father manages to catch her up, but instead of quarreling or punishing her, through a ruse achieves to teach her a lesson. One of those genuine rarities, invaluable film document in the giant English filmmaker's oeuvre.

              

In the beginning of the film we see a man (Gordon Harker), crabby fellow who revises some newspapers, in one of them, the headline indicates that the daughter of a tycoon is again challenging him by flying halfway ocean to meet her lover; the father is himself. This applies outside, in the middle of the dance of a luxury cruise in the Atlantic, a female approaches on a raft, is his daughter, getting to board the ship. This girl (Betty Balfour) once on the boat, hides her true intentions, for she has gone there to see her boyfriend (Jean Bradin). She, however, meets a man on board (Ferdinand von Alten), which is watching, following closely and with discretion her actions. Surprisingly, dad reaches the ship and tells the girl, cheating, that he, being a prominent Wall Street broker, has lost all his money over a careless move, he tells her they are now in total economic ruin, something that affects the young woman, who tries to even sell her valuable jewelry, but they will get stolen. Back on shore, the magnate continues the charade, living in a hovel, depriving themselves of amenities, the girl takes care of her father, parts away from her boyfriend, and even gets a job in a cabaret. She begins working there, where is the man who before approached her, who unsuccessfully tries to seduce her, her boyfriend also comes to the place. Finally his father appears to clear things up and end her ordeals.

In this simple and unusual hitchcockian picture, after the first images of father reading the newspapers, the next shot is remarkable, the camera is placed in front of a glass of champagne, leaning, spilling its content into the camera, a simple but nice trick that makes you feel as if the director was having fun. Hitch begins with that resource, introducing the third character in question, the man, and apparently managed to obtain the effect of that trick thanks to an apparatus constructed for that purpose, and incidentally also portrays the title of the picture, the champagne, as the feature is a kind of allegory of the aristocracy, frivolous and flippant, which comes to represent that drink. As stated, this is a simple, but effective visual contraption that brandishes the filmmaker, and after the dance sequence during which the girl arrives, we will see at certain times, a shaky camera, rocking and swinging, imitating the movement of the ship at sea; a comedy outcome is gotten, a bit frisky, changing the perspective, first from the dizzy point of view of the young male protagonist, then to the general approach of the picture itself. Then continues the filmmaker obtaining some effects of distortion of images, triplicating them by overlayed shots to reinforce that impression of dizziness caused by being on the high seas, almost introducing us to the boat. Effects and tricks alike will be repeated at other times of the picture and with different intentions, certainly seemed as if Hitchcock was already aware of his skills on the technical area, just was missing prop up the style of the filmmaker. The truth be told, apart from these artifacts that adorn a litttle the feature, portrayed story itself is simple, lacking major attractive, Hitch adapts, as traditionally did, a successful literary work, and participated even in the very adaptation of the script. But the film, as pointed in previous lines, is to translate how frivolous was the English aristocratic society then, satirizing wayward daughter of the tycoon who flies across the Atlantic to be with her boyfriend to contradict daddy, and she laughs over having missed the plane of the poor man; a not very complex issue, Hitch was still searching his topic, his thing, and therefore his style, suspense style.

So, Hitch slides his camera in the corners of the locations of the film, searching for some detail or interesting flash of technical virtuosity, and being this a picture where neither argument nor history enable greatness, the director tries to seek and find, almost producing these great things. As it could not be otherwise, some lust prints the filmmaker, of course minimal considering the time, when we see Betty Balfour image, reflected in a mirror, of her bare and goodshaped back. The movie also comes to be almost a particular brilliance excercise of Balfour, for being the protagonist, her face is what the camera mostly focuses during many sequences of footage. Medium shots, pretty closeups, covering her smiles, her gestures of grief, despair, innocence, her big, expressive blue eyes, whimsical female and her experiences are the center of the film, she even appears in different costumes, different paraphernalia, we see her with an elegant and daring outfit at a time, then with diametrically opposed clothes. Also opposed are the faces that we see of the female, when she stops being capricious and jovial young girl we saw at first, to move and take care of her father, to refuse financial support from her boyfriend even, and finally, in the absence of money, getting to work in a cabaret; certainly a radical change in her existence. In this, one of the final silent films by giant English filmmaker, the director takes the path of comedy, as would make the same year, 1928, with The Farmer's wife, setting what to be fair is a good comedy, but not brilliant, in any case what is clear is that comedy is not field for Hitch, he was already toying with suspense, as in his success The Lodger (1927), but not yet fully addressed. It is true that it is somewhat strange to see Hitchcock directing a film of this nature, of this guideline, it is something that, with the nearby exception of comedy cited above, and perhaps a more distant one in The Trouble with Harry (1955), we never would see in the production of English, because afterwards would find his sap, mystery, uncertainty, suspense, adding his technical virtues; he would leave innocuous topics.

Many critics consider Hitch silent films as minor works, films in which the British titan was still looking for his style; in fact these films are far from the director's finest production, but in my view those can never be classified as minor or mediocre works. While this film is still missing almost all cornerstones or main edges of the director (no death, mysteries or intrigues, persecutions, nor the issue of false guilty or love triangles), the mere fact of being a silent film of Hitchcock it's incentive, the mere fact of discovering here the roots of many personal seals that would never erase from his film imprint, already make it an appetizing audiovisual dish for the true appreciator of Hitchcockian cinema. For example, we can continue to discover (in case of being a knowledgeable spectator in this issue) how from the beginning the great Hitch was a superb wordless storyteller, it is at this stage of silent film where is better notticed, for obvious reasons, how Hitch did not require excessive dialogues for his stories, and even when there are silent films of his where this feature is markedly best achieved, it is essential for the study of British cinema oeuvre. At the end we see that the director seemed to almost have awaken a little, the camera regains ease that had lost for almost all film, camera makes some bold moves, also the figure of the femme torning between two men, the love triangle appears, but quite warmly. It was the twilight of silent films, it begun a year before the opening of this film with said The Jazz Singer, the silent cinema gradually would cease to exist, many directors, immortal silent film Titans would not manage to make the leap to talkies, as in the case of Griffith; other masters, such as Dreyer, Eisenstein, Chaplin and Hitchcock himself, among others, however would achieve to evolve, and in the case of Hitch, certainly the best was yet to come. Hitch would still direct a last silent film, The Manxman, before officially directed only sound films, and before fully cement his legend. We have in the present picture one of the sources of the roots of this immortal director, a job that might not be a masterpiece, but has reasons to be appreciated and valued.