Third sound film by remarkable Hitchcock, the master of suspense already entered more and more decidedly in the talkies, assimilating the novelties of the great technical advance, and developing increasingly his style. As usual, he adapts a literary work, a play by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, which tells a story rather simple, when in a company of actors, suddenly a woman, one of the actresses, appears murdered, being the main suspect another one of the actresses of the group. At the beginning of the trial, the members of the company themselves declare her guilty, being the girl's only hope, a fellow actor, who investigates in parallel with the police, struggling to prove the innocence of the girl. Maintaining some of the main Hitchcockian guidelines, the film does not reach the level or category of other major films of the director, but it shows how quickly the English filmmaker adapted to the great change that the sound revolution meant, and it serves as a platform for continuing some of his experiments with sound. Hitch continues with his stage of English cinema, at a sure pace, growing his genius, his film career in the following years would deliver some of the most memorable exercises of cinema, real jewels of suspense.
The action begins in a neighborhood, it is a silent and dark night, a tranquility that is broken by the noises of a hurried steps, as well as struggles noises and screams. It all happens at Diana Baring's (Norah Baring) residence, an actress, in a neighborhood where she lives with her fellow actors. When the police arrive, they find a female corpse, and Diana simply does not remember anything. The jury is formed by Diana's own colleagues, including Doucie Markham (Phyllis Konstam), Ted Markham (Edward Chapman), Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall), and Handel Fane (Esme Percy), and although at the beginning there is some doubt, they all give guilty verdict to Diana, all but Sir John; nevertheeless, by pressure from the group, even he votes guilty. The judge gives sentence to the girl, but Sir John is not at all convinced of her guilt, so he begins to investigate the facts himself, meeting with some of the relatives and involved in the murder. The task is not simple, but helped by the Markham couple, gets closer to who seems to have been the real killer. After some research, Sir John finally manages to unravel the mystery, some secrets come to light, and even gets to materialize an idyll with his beloved Diana.
We observe an interesting beginning of the film, with a dark traveling, in which a warm halo of a certain expressionism perhaps somebody may nottice, in which also the use of the sound already begins to manifest, with that incessant patter that fuses with the shade, already mystery and uncertainty are getting engendered. Then it will be contrasted with the silence of the next scene, with a dead silence that dominates everything, while the camera explores through the details of the scene of the crime. It is part of the narrative language of the filmmaker, since his beginnings in silent cinema was always brilliant the Briton to narrate without words, and in that regard during the picture we will appreciate details that demonstrate one of the many virtues of Hitchcock, a remarkable technical domain, great management of the camera for his visual narration. For the connoisseur of the first Hitchcockian works, from the silent features, the way in which the images are used by the director to narrate will be perfectly recognizable and identifiable, handwritten sheets displayed on the screen, the cards on which the members of the jury vote on Diana, premonitory images of the shadow of a gallows, clocks, a weather vane, people confined in rooms, among others; certainly one of the director's specialties. Hitchcock also continued his sound experiments in the cinema, began to diversify the possibilities of its use, being a very pleasant example of this the part in which Sir John is shaving, and begins to think about the situation of Diana, and the great Hitch chooses like musical accompaniment a titan in the matter. We will listen to the prelude of the gigantic composition
Tristan and Isolda, exquisite melody that collaborates in a peculiar way to create restlessness, concern, as the sublime Wagnerian notes flow, while in turn we hear the thoughts of Sir John, the element of the interior monologue, a rather novel element, as well as effective.
As it was almost a tradition in the Hitchcockian creation, the filmmaker adapts a literary work again, and being in its development this film so testimonial, the theatrical halo that impregnates the work is quite notorious, observing the frames, the compositions of the same ones, and even the declamations of some personages, with a scenic treatment strongly theatrical. The second part of the film is the most exemplary in that sense, because it focuses on the researches of Sir John, and is where the treatment mentioned is more notticeable. It is also in that second part where the picture becomes more linear than ever, a linearity that almost will not be broken, the director is not much encouraged to visual experiments, except in the final sequence. This characteristic feature of the film makes it become slow, makes it at times not finished curdling, but it is just the third talkie by Hitch, the best was yet to come, since he had practically defined all his guidelines. Hitchcock was already taking the final steps to find his subject, the suspense, was already defining the final edges of what would be his style, his final seal; many of its cornerstones are already here, murder, police investigation, intrigue and uncertainty, the filmmaker has already found his topic, would simply define the ways to raise it. Another element is present, his well-known voyeurism, partially showing a female changing clothes under her nightgown. Also the director presents a striking approach to the homosexual world, in the figure of the transvestite Fane, detail that is treated with striking naturalness, especially for the time, moreover considering the capital importance of this character in the development of the picture. Certainly Hitch carried to the limit some of guidelines of his film, and there is room for the comedy, lukewarm comedy, as the man who can not speak until he puts his false teeth.
An element in which the staging highlights clearly becomes the work of montage, frenetic and intense at times, and always with a definite objective, for example in the great sequence of deliberations, that frenetism serves to generate tension, this in addition to an efficient managing of close-ups. In those moments, of multiple close-ups of the members of the jury, plus the accelerated pace of the assembly, they end up configuring a tense and pressing atmosphere, in which everyone practically devours Sir John for thinking that Diana is innocent, is well reflected that pressure to which they submit him so that he votes guilty. Hitch continues to recruit many of the actors we have met in his silent film stage, and it is certainly attractive and curious to hear them finally speaking, recognizing more than one character that we have appreciated in famous works like
The Ring,
Easy Virtue, among others. Hitchcock was never very supporter of the traditional way of making police and mystery films in his country, in which spectator and protagonist are in the same point with respect to what is known of the mystery, both are discovering the events and clues at the same time; Hitchcock preferred to usually give us more information, the viewer knows something that the protagonist does not, goes a step forward. But in the present film there is an exception, because the intrigue is maintained until the end, which is when the real assassin is discovered. For the final sequence Hitrchcock keeps all the force and the visual climax, all the frantic presentation in images of the sequence denouement, recovers Hitch many of his visual contraptions, a camera that deliriously is placed in the perspective of the trapeze artist, his classic overlayed shots, the overlayed images to give it a nightmarish and surreal tone at the end of the film. The great Hitchcock continues to evolve and refine his style, and although this feature is not the best of his oeuvre, it serves much to continue studying and analyzing the work of this great filmmaker.
Another of the early sound film exercises of the giant British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, the immortal master of suspense, who in those years, beginning the third decade of the last century, was naturally still delineating his definitive cinematic style. Picture that is very coherent with the other works that together give shape to the director's film production, in which we miss almost all the main artistic vertices of the filmmaker, but in turn, for the prepared eye, it will be possible to recognize some common points with the mentioned features, the other films that make up this formative stage of the great Hitch. Keeping some of these common points, the director adapts to the big screen again a work primarily literary, in this case a play of a certain success by John Galsworthy, which portrays the history of the rural drama of two families, one of rooted country ancestry, which will have a rough shock when its tranquility and routine break when the other, a wealthy family, whose wealth is product of great businesses, arrives; that friction will bring lamentable and even fatal consequences. We will recognize some relatively assertive faces of Hitchcock's filmography, as well as new additions to his acting team as is natural; a movie branded as minor, but never despicable.
The actions begin in a farm, a rural environment where the daily activities of these locations are carried out, is the estate where the Hillcrist marriage lives, the husband (CV France) and Mrs. Hillcrist (Helen Haye), among to his Daughter Jill (Jill Esmond). Their existence is quiet, however, some economic hardships begin to torment the peasant clan, and at that moment appears Mr. Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn), wealthy city aristocrat, that arrives at the field with intentions to buy lands and modernize the area. In an initial interview with Mr. Hillcrist, Hornblower makes known his intentions to buy their land, obtaining negative resistance; the war is declared, even says Hillcrist. The economic difficulties do not cease, an auction is carried out by the lands of the Hillcrist, buying it Hornblower for a large monetary sum. Thus comes the aristocratic patriarch and his sons, Rolf (Frank Lawton) and Charles (John Longden), in addition to his daughter-in-law Chloe (Phyllis Konstam), but the way they arrive does more than irritate former owners, particularly Mrs. Hillcrist. The country matriarch does not doubt in, aided by Dawker (Edward Chapman), blackmailing Mr. Hornblower with shameful secret information that has on Chloe. The very tense situation will finally have a regrettable ending for both families in litigation.
The feature depicts a strong human conflict, a social conflict, a social-classes-clash, and this marked contraposition and contrast is readily printed, when we see a representative of each clan together in one of the first sequences, the beautiful Jill and the young Rolf Hornblower, and the opposition becomes clear and obvious: he in a car, she on a horse; he wearing black, she in white. Whether or not random these details, let us glimpse the strong antagonism of families we will appreciate, including some shots overlaying to reinforce this intention of Hitch. Curiously (and strangely as well, by the way) Hitch does not dare to make many of his usual visual contraptions like the one just mentioned, and in the other few that he wields, a nice and warm Expressionist heritage is noticed. Nevertheless, in certain cinematographic edges, it does keep closeness and similarity the picture with other contemporaries, like the immediately previous Murder!. Thus, we can see a very characteristic beginning of the film, when we see a fast parade of images chained, typical images of the area where everything happens, detailed images of animals, domestic dogs, people, a horn, etc. These images are characteristic of the pictures of this stage of Hitch, and are, among other elements, what make a task relatively easy, for the connoisseur, to recognize this hitchcokian movie as a work of its author. Like so many other Hitchcockian features of those years, the present video, inspired as many times in theater dramas, is impregnated with a strong scenic conception of that artistic branch. Thus, slow plane sequences in turn give form to a theatrical halo; that curtain, which, like a sheet, repeated and significant times appears on the screen (when Chloe approaches a collapse over her reputation), sometimes transforming into a door, which separates the viewer from the action, who almost feels it.
Also, most of the actions happen indoors, and this, added to the few main characters, with secondary ones as well, contributes to generate that subtle theatrical but almost always present in the movie aura, and inevitably also gives it a certain slowness development to the film, which ends at certain moments feeling innocuous. We will appreciate some details of plastic beauty at the beginning of the film, Miss Hillcrist walks away riding a horse, and a beautiful frame presents her to us, surrounded by the natural environment, and despite the absence of vital color in the black and white, beauty is appreciated in that brief picture. In an almost immediate sequence, we appreciate the car of a member of the Hornblowers approaching a house, with an equal of laudable frame, but unfortunately, the images of these characteristics practically do not repeat during the film, because as it was said, incomprehensibly the director almost completely resigns to his accustomed and appreciable visual tricks; something lamentable, is a film of the most linear that has been seen from him. But among the positive elements in the film, which of course there are, we have the sequence of the auction, which is one of the highlights of the film in terms of staging, starting with a slow pace, barely interrupted by certain Jill's hallucinations, to then reach a frenetic pace when bidders begin to make their offerings. To this fast pace collaborates an energic and vigourous camera work, trembling putting us in the auctioner's point of view, the situation grows in intensity at a geometric rhythm, and reaches the greatest tension when Hornblower's final offer is accepted. The change of rhythm in this sequence is sensible, and it is necessary considering how crucial the circumstance is, introducing us to the drama of both the peasant and the aristocrat, introducing us to the closest thing to the suspense that is in the picture.
Interesting in a not very attractive work is Hitch's portrayal of the society of his time, of the rancid aristocracy -as in the very film sometime is said-, of its concern to maintain a false and artificial image before the society, the fear of social humiliation. But also hypocrisy, machiavellianism, things that are not alien to the supposedly lower stratum, the rural stratum of the Hillcrist, particularly in the surprising and cold figure of the mother. In the film we explore dangerous human relations, what the passions can unleash on the people, putting at risk their own existences, an aggressiveness that became psychological torture for poor Chloe, who ends up crumbling in the middle of that despicable world. In the midst of these outrages, in the midst of that hardness, of that machiavellianism and coldness, only Chloe cracks, she is the fragility in the middle of all that hardness. The director portrays many of the human passions, negative passions, flaws, complex human relationships seen through the lens of social conflict. The final figure of the tree going down is the obvious symbolism of a human group that has decomposed, has broken, has been corrupted to its root. It is said that Hitch made this film more commissioned by British studies than anything else, and perhaps it is true, a conflict, a clash of two social masses is not a recurring theme in Hitch, aside from being left out a little the political cinema or class struggle, focusing more on human confrontation. Another work not very similar to filmmaker's usuals, something common in this period as it was said, his main topics are missing, there is no death, no suspense, no police investigation, and the few cornerstones that appear, do it in dribs and drabs. It is very noticeable that it is a feature of the initial period of Hitch, his English period, is still warm the filmmaker, still young, still without completely entering fully in his thing, the suspense. Depending on the audience, it is a non-spectacular feature, but necessary for fans of the great Hitch.
