Alfred Hitchcock, during the 1930s, prolificly produced more than one feature annually, was a stage in which the cinema world was largely still assimilating the gigantic change and evolution that the arrival of sound meant. The master of suspense was as well growing as a filmmaker, was founding himself, still drawing the definitive seals of his own cinema, and would produce those years some of the most unusual pictures of his career. For the present film Hitch surprises propers and strangers, adapting part of the life of the great composer Johann Strauss son, the younger, and as it almost never stopped being a rule in the hitchockian creation, the English filmmaker adapted to the cinema a literary work, in this occasion by Heinz Reichert and Ernst Marischka, in which the beginnings of the young Strauss junior are set, the moment in which composed the immortal waltz,
The Blue Danube, the interpersonal relations that had with a girlfriend of his, jealous of the attentions that one distinguished countess put in the young composer, but also the suspicion of his father, Johann Strauss senior, facing the effervescent musical ascent of his son. Cinematographically, this work contributes little, relatively little to Hitch's prolific and extensive work, and divides critics' opinions about its worth and significance throughout his filmography.
The picture begins in a residence, is Vienna, there is much activity in the surroundings, in the interior of the house is the young Johann Strauss (Esmond Knight), playing the piano, whereas the beautiful Rasi (Jessie Matthews), his girlfriend, accompanies by singing. Johann charmes all the ladies who listen to his melodies from outside the room, and also attracts the attention of the distinguished Countess Helga von Stahl (Fay Compton), while there is much activity, many outrages for a cultural activity. The countess soon meets her admired composer, professes her admiration and even sets an appointment at her home, to hear him composing. The young Johann plays in the orchestra led by his father, the renowned Johann Strauss senior (Edmund Gwenn), but when the son plays for the father at the piano his most recent creation, still in process of creation, only gets mocks. The opposite happens to the Countess, who appreciates his music, and with whom he meets Prince Gustav (Frank Vosper); but it is with Rasi that he manages to advance in his new creation, until it is ready. Rasi feels jealous of the countess and her closeness to Johann, even thinks about ending their relationship, but finally, the song is performed in public, is a resounding success, Strauss Father recognizes the undeniable talent of his son, and Rasi realizes that she is Johann's true sweetheart.
The present movie feels atypical from the very beginning, because there are concatenated together some representative images of the area where everything happens, but the absence of frenetic montage, the darkness of the frames, so many occasions recurrent in his most famous and successful films, converts this feature in something different from the initial second. Abundant musical elements, and a generally static camera, according to the overall tone of the feature (only timidly we appreciate a little mobility in the camera in the first few minutes), finish configuring that beginning of film in which we immediatelly nottice that this is a different movie, even considering the context, when not even a lustrum was fulfilled of the sound cinema, and when Hitchcock produced many atypical features for his style. The treatment that is dispensed to the movie, a treatment that is light, innocent, delicate and almost playful continues to shape this film, continues to make it scarce and almost force us to evoke some of the Hitchcock's works that are closest to this exercise; even the director's often infallible cameo seems to be missing. Only a few symmetrical and harmonic frames recall the film-director's cinematic expertise, the precision of the camera, as well, finally acquires mobility and correct expositive language when it portrays the young Strauss with von Stahl Countess. The camera wanders serenely with a delicate travelling through the room where the composer and countess share the time artistically, one playing, the other singing, also parallels the beautiful Rasi, who is singing as well. Those very few moments of freedom for the camera, added to the frames portrayed, frankly, convey more beauty without words -conventional words, conversations, because there is singing- than most of the footage.
It is a film in general lines, light and cheerful, strikingly innocuous, with the central story, the creative process of Strauss son for his Blue Danube, framed in a juvenile love story, innocent, playful, making it almost impossible not to surprise the character of the film, so different from what is conventionally considered the best of hiotchcockian cinema. The historical veracity, that is, the veracity of the facts portrayed, is something that I will leave strictly to the historians or connoisseurs of the life of the master, Strauss son, this article focuses on the appreciated film work, its strengths and shortcomings, and the way it distances itself from the highest summits of Hitchcock. We can recall some of Hitch's oddities of that period,
The Farmer's Wife or
Champagne, both of 1928, both silent comedies away from the suspense, likewise
The Skin Game or
Rich and Strange, both released in 1931; the three last mentioned works maintains the common edge of the aristocracy, and its defects embodied in the films. Those are some of the works that I could list as the oddities of Hitch, but naturally some could also name
The Ring (1927), or some other atypical work, with different criteria of appreciation. Of course, we can appreciate a feminine treatment very different from Hitch, avoiding the traditional misogyny that the filmmaker faces, and the female duel is appreciable, although not intense, it is decent, with young and beautiful Jessie Matthews facing to Fay Compton, the countess; both satisfy viewer, not stand out, but without dissonancing either. Interesting and different appreciations to female characters, as, just to cite an example, we saw in
Juno and the peacock (1929), and then we would see in the huge
Psycho.
Hitchcock said in an interview that this was the feature he felt less proud of, he called it
a musical without music, and certainly the picture feels as if it did not finish taking shape, it feels that it loses the effectiveness of the best Hitchcock, the interest is diluted and everything is lost in the history of juvenile love, which steals the attention, in these young fantasies the main guidelines of the English director are lost. As more than one can intuit, the picture, to a large extent, aside of an acceptable staging and sobriety to represent the Vienna of these years, perhaps more than finding its goodness or virtues, can serve to look for certain affinities with other films, as other critics have tried to do. In this sense, some of them tried to find similarities in some detail, such as the waltz dance image that almost like a leitmotiv repeatedly appears in a posterior feature, or the preponderance of the musical presence in the Albert Hall appreciated that same year, 1934, in
The man that knew too much; even some closeness was wanted to appreciate with
Torn Curtain (1966). Anyway, what does seem consensual is that this is not a masterpiece, not one of the cinematographic summits of the enormous Hitchcock, but is interesting and necessary for the so-called completists of Hitch's work. Lacking almost all of Hitch's main guidelines, warmly recovering all the watchwords with the camera work deployed in the musical interpretation sequences, and with a montage that frequently appears in the same sequences, the film arouses different emotions, but does not excels. Some fun and curious wink at voyeurism we will find, though, with the beautiful Rasi being forcibly lowered through a ladder, and displaying, a little too much for the time, her charms. In addition is united the correct and distinguished Edmund Gwenn like Strauss father; overall it stands an atypical film of Hitchcock, but for the right palate, will have elements of interest.
Alfred Hitchcock, during the 1930s, prolificly produced more than one feature annually, was a stage in which the cinema world was largely still assimilating the gigantic change and evolution that the arrival of sound meant. The master of suspense was as well growing as a filmmaker, was founding himself, still drawing the definitive seals of his own cinema, and would produce those years some of the most unusual pictures of his career. For the present film Hitch surprises propers and strangers, adapting part of the life of the great composer Johann Strauss son, the younger, and as it almost never stopped being a rule in the hitchockian creation, the English filmmaker adapted to the cinema a literary work, in this occasion by Heinz Reichert and Ernst Marischka, in which the beginnings of the young Strauss junior are set, the moment in which composed the immortal waltz, The Blue Danube, the interpersonal relations that had with a girlfriend of his, jealous of the attentions that one distinguished countess put in the young composer, but also the suspicion of his father, Johann Strauss senior, facing the effervescent musical ascent of his son. Cinematographically, this work contributes little, relatively little to Hitch's prolific and extensive work, and divides critics' opinions about its worth and significance throughout his filmography.
The picture begins in a residence, is Vienna, there is much activity in the surroundings, in the interior of the house is the young Johann Strauss (Esmond Knight), playing the piano, whereas the beautiful Rasi (Jessie Matthews), his girlfriend, accompanies by singing. Johann charmes all the ladies who listen to his melodies from outside the room, and also attracts the attention of the distinguished Countess Helga von Stahl (Fay Compton), while there is much activity, many outrages for a cultural activity. The countess soon meets her admired composer, professes her admiration and even sets an appointment at her home, to hear him composing. The young Johann plays in the orchestra led by his father, the renowned Johann Strauss senior (Edmund Gwenn), but when the son plays for the father at the piano his most recent creation, still in process of creation, only gets mocks. The opposite happens to the Countess, who appreciates his music, and with whom he meets Prince Gustav (Frank Vosper); but it is with Rasi that he manages to advance in his new creation, until it is ready. Rasi feels jealous of the countess and her closeness to Johann, even thinks about ending their relationship, but finally, the song is performed in public, is a resounding success, Strauss Father recognizes the undeniable talent of his son, and Rasi realizes that she is Johann's true sweetheart.
The present movie feels atypical from the very beginning, because there are concatenated together some representative images of the area where everything happens, but the absence of frenetic montage, the darkness of the frames, so many occasions recurrent in his most famous and successful films, converts this feature in something different from the initial second. Abundant musical elements, and a generally static camera, according to the overall tone of the feature (only timidly we appreciate a little mobility in the camera in the first few minutes), finish configuring that beginning of film in which we immediatelly nottice that this is a different movie, even considering the context, when not even a lustrum was fulfilled of the sound cinema, and when Hitchcock produced many atypical features for his style. The treatment that is dispensed to the movie, a treatment that is light, innocent, delicate and almost playful continues to shape this film, continues to make it scarce and almost force us to evoke some of the Hitchcock's works that are closest to this exercise; even the director's often infallible cameo seems to be missing. Only a few symmetrical and harmonic frames recall the film-director's cinematic expertise, the precision of the camera, as well, finally acquires mobility and correct expositive language when it portrays the young Strauss with von Stahl Countess. The camera wanders serenely with a delicate travelling through the room where the composer and countess share the time artistically, one playing, the other singing, also parallels the beautiful Rasi, who is singing as well. Those very few moments of freedom for the camera, added to the frames portrayed, frankly, convey more beauty without words -conventional words, conversations, because there is singing- than most of the footage.
It is a film in general lines, light and cheerful, strikingly innocuous, with the central story, the creative process of Strauss son for his Blue Danube, framed in a juvenile love story, innocent, playful, making it almost impossible not to surprise the character of the film, so different from what is conventionally considered the best of hiotchcockian cinema. The historical veracity, that is, the veracity of the facts portrayed, is something that I will leave strictly to the historians or connoisseurs of the life of the master, Strauss son, this article focuses on the appreciated film work, its strengths and shortcomings, and the way it distances itself from the highest summits of Hitchcock. We can recall some of Hitch's oddities of that period, The Farmer's Wife or Champagne, both of 1928, both silent comedies away from the suspense, likewise The Skin Game or Rich and Strange, both released in 1931; the three last mentioned works maintains the common edge of the aristocracy, and its defects embodied in the films. Those are some of the works that I could list as the oddities of Hitch, but naturally some could also name The Ring (1927), or some other atypical work, with different criteria of appreciation. Of course, we can appreciate a feminine treatment very different from Hitch, avoiding the traditional misogyny that the filmmaker faces, and the female duel is appreciable, although not intense, it is decent, with young and beautiful Jessie Matthews facing to Fay Compton, the countess; both satisfy viewer, not stand out, but without dissonancing either. Interesting and different appreciations to female characters, as, just to cite an example, we saw in Juno and the peacock (1929), and then we would see in the huge Psycho.
Hitchcock said in an interview that this was the feature he felt less proud of, he called it a musical without music, and certainly the picture feels as if it did not finish taking shape, it feels that it loses the effectiveness of the best Hitchcock, the interest is diluted and everything is lost in the history of juvenile love, which steals the attention, in these young fantasies the main guidelines of the English director are lost. As more than one can intuit, the picture, to a large extent, aside of an acceptable staging and sobriety to represent the Vienna of these years, perhaps more than finding its goodness or virtues, can serve to look for certain affinities with other films, as other critics have tried to do. In this sense, some of them tried to find similarities in some detail, such as the waltz dance image that almost like a leitmotiv repeatedly appears in a posterior feature, or the preponderance of the musical presence in the Albert Hall appreciated that same year, 1934, in The man that knew too much; even some closeness was wanted to appreciate with Torn Curtain (1966). Anyway, what does seem consensual is that this is not a masterpiece, not one of the cinematographic summits of the enormous Hitchcock, but is interesting and necessary for the so-called completists of Hitch's work. Lacking almost all of Hitch's main guidelines, warmly recovering all the watchwords with the camera work deployed in the musical interpretation sequences, and with a montage that frequently appears in the same sequences, the film arouses different emotions, but does not excels. Some fun and curious wink at voyeurism we will find, though, with the beautiful Rasi being forcibly lowered through a ladder, and displaying, a little too much for the time, her charms. In addition is united the correct and distinguished Edmund Gwenn like Strauss father; overall it stands an atypical film of Hitchcock, but for the right palate, will have elements of interest.
