Waltzes from Vienna (1934) - Alfred Hitchcock

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.

Number Seventeen (1932) - Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchocck continued during the thirties of the last century evolving and developing as a talkies filmmaker, with filmic exercises that still were not near the higher summits that the director would achieve some years later, but it can be recognized some of his main features already. If in previous exercises to this picture Hitch had been ostensibly moved away from his most recognizable imprint as master of suspense (not to go further, we see it on immediatelly previous Rich and strange, released the same year), with themes and topics far from mysteries, intrigues and uncertainties, recovers in the present work a bit of his innermost essence the director. In order not to lose the custom, Hitchcock once again adapts to the cinema a new literary work, a new theatrical piece, written by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, to capture one of the shorter films that he ever shot, with the simple history of a group of thieves, a band that takes refuge in an abandoned house, being followed by a detective; when a young woman, member of the gang, prevents the detective from being killed, in love with him, an intense persecution to recover a jewel will begin. Another picture with which, without being the best work of the director, you can follow the evolutionary path of the filmmaker.

              

In an undetermined place, two individuals are in a lonely location, it is a stormy night, they wander the shady corners of what appears to be an uninhabited house. As they walk through the interiors of the abandoned house, they find the corpse of a man, not quite knowing what has happened. They are thieves, they are hiding in that abandoned address, which is the number seventeen of some avenue in England. Among the refugees is Ben (Leon M. Lion), and the young woman Nora Brant (Anne Gray), they are hiding with their cohorts, they have stolen a valuable necklace, but they know that a police officer is tracking them. Appears then the detective, Barton (John Stuart), who suspects what is happening, but there is no certain, and begins an investigation, searches the house, as well as everybody, not finding any definitive evidence. But Barton is getting closer to the truth, in the numerous band are also Brant (Donald Calthrop) and Henry Doyle (Barry Jones), and when the detective has identified the band and is going to arrest them, they are about to eliminate him, but Nora helps Barton, and he survives. It follows an intense persecution, Barton follows the band that flees in train, they carry the necklace, but the detective manages to reach them, the jewel has been recovered, and even the romance between Barton and Nora has been born.

Hitch recovers some of the dark directives of his cinema immediately in the present film, when the beginning of the same one is tenebrous, with parsimony initiates the movie, but plagued of mystery, when we see one of the members of the band entering the dark abandoned house on a hectic night. But while entering the location, and always treated everything without words, the rhythm changes, as well as a lights-and-shadows management that immediately generates suspense, and also the camera work and montage will finish setting this brief but effective sequence. The mentioned management of lights and shadows will be extended to the whole feature, being a more than appreciable resource, contributing decidedly in the final dark aesthetic of the film, with the human shadows that project in ways almost unreal by all the house, looking sometimes as another character in the movie. Hitchcock sets up a powerful work of backlighting, which is also associated with chiaroscuros that engender an atmosphere of seclusion, an atmosphere of isolation, we feel that tense seclusion of the fugitives, the urgency of their situation with the detective on top of them, an effect that during the first part of the film, the most dilated, while they are all in the house of number seventeen, works very effectively. Again, the director uses minimal resources for his work, few protagonists, narrow scenarios and spaces -this, for with the exception of the final persecution, almost everything happens in the dark and abandoned residence of number seventeen-, Hitch's narrative economy will again manifest, this probably also conditioned by the low budget with which the feature was shot, but this is not a factor that feels that has been definitive for the staging.

Also in this short film Hitch recovers to a certain extent what was always one of his cinematic watchwords, the efficient and attractive camera work in his visual narration, a camera of free and precise movements, good-timing zooms and resolute travellings that follow the action of the protagonists by times, and by others places us practically in their perspectives, in their points of view. It is also added to that remarkable and recovered camera mobility, the aforementioned montage, with those changes of rhythm that are distributed in the film, and that suddenly unleash a frantic pace in the presentation and the way these images are intertwined. Images reinforced powerfully by high-angle shots, or low-angle shots, obtaining with those sudden changes of pace a suspense that is distended during the film, capturing efficiently the attention with that deployment, that work by the camera. The change of pace is something that will repeatedly use Hitch on the picture and always with good results, because then again will change the pace of his film in a notticeable way, with the second and shorter, but more intense part, the frantic chase to the train, the turning point in the film. The final persecution is a well-succeeded sequence, where all the aforementioned work of montage, of rapid concatenation of frames, reaches its culminating point, its highest cusp, to portray the speed of both the train and the bus, and the inertia in the protagonists, the frenetism reaches its greater point, good way to close the film, it was saved for the end that exciting outcome. Again we see travellings, more risky and dynamic than ever, diversity of angles, frames, camera mobility that also reaches its best moments, everything converges in a sequence that also has a lot of dynamism, diversity in their expressive records, correct and effective dynamism for that final persecution.














It is a film coherent with the moment of Hitchcock's career, that stage of his career, in which was still in formation the great genius, but who was already taking the final steps in that formation. Thus, as pointed in the opening paragraph, the feature immediately precedent to this work had been the atypical Rich and strange, also released in 1931, an unusual and innocuous study of the aristocracy and its frivolities, a subject that would not be exclusive to that film for Hitch by the way. But the present work recovers, from the aesthetic point of view, passing through the camera work, in addition, warmly, to the topic, much of what is the essence of the highest Hitchcockian cinema. Although almost all those guidelines are reflected to a lesser extent than in his masterpieces, and although the film feels to me at times a little slow, already it is perceived as an approach to what it was always Hitchcock; warm approachement, because it is a suspense not yet framed in all the artistic edges of the british, but already the path of his best norms is resumed. The film, in short, can not be counted among the best productions of the british filmmaker, but it has positive things, within its limitations, and in its brief footage, it achieves its objective, captures and maintains interest, weaves some intrigue, and aesthetycally the director meets again with some guidelines of his that had diluted strikingly in previous exercises. Does not recruit Hitchcock flashy actors, nor does he continue working with actors of his previous silent stage -as he did in other early talkies-, is a simple movie, simple plot, but with those elements, it is enough for Hitch to configure a decent, decent and appreciable work. Like almost all the productions of this moment in the cinematographic creation of the enormous Hitchcock, this is a film that can surprise the one who only knows the masterpieces of the english, but for the connoisseur of all his filmography, will serve as a useful tool for a global understanding of the oeuvre of the immortal master of suspense.