BEFORE: Linking from "The Manxman", Anny Ondra carries over.
THE PLOT: Alice White is the daughter of a London shopkeeper. Her boyfriend, Frank Webber, is a Scotland Yard detective who seems more interested in police work than in her. Frank takes Alice out one night, but she has secretly arranged to meet another man.
AFTER: Although it's somewhat fascinating to see the results of the first stabs at using this new "sound" technology, what was created here was something of an anomaly - a film that was created as a silent, but released with sound. It feels a bit like the technology came into Hitchcock's hands about halfway through, so some scenes have recorded dialogue, and others don't.
Thanks to the dispensing of written dialogue cards, I therefore had to watch the film on a computer, with a browser open to the plot posted on Wikipedia, just so I could keep up with what's going on. The other result of this "half-talkie" approach is that the story feels sort of half-formed - a couple in a tea house has an argument, and he storms out. What were they arguing about? I guess it's not important after all.
The opening scenes, with a Scotland Yard detective arresting a suspect at his home, turn out to be almost completely disconnected from the rest of the plot. This sequence only serves to introduce the detective character, who is dating a woman who's also dating another man - there's that great Hitchcock portayal of unfaithful women again.
NITPICK POINT: Detectives usually knock on the door quite loudly or perhaps barge in, but I kind of doubt they'd open the door silently and just stand there for a while. Maybe this is how it was done in London in the 1920's, but I doubt it.
It's good to see Hitchcock turn back to the thriller genre, following up his first attempt with "The Lodger", because he stayed in this groove for most of his career, I believe. You can see the first appearances here of what (I'm assuming) became Hitchcock mainstays - shady characters, a situation that leads to a murder, the voyeurism of a camera catching a woman undressing.
The subtle message here is that if you're a woman in the 1920's who's dating more than one fellow, you practically deserve to get raped. What's less clear is whether such a woman should be treated worse by society if she gets raped, or if she kills her attacker in self-defense. Seems like society is going to shun her either way - so women didn't seem to have a whole lot of options.
The key confrontation scene between the detective, the murderer and the blackmailer is full of jump cuts - one can imagine the actors conversationally improvising their way into a corner, and then waiting for some indication from the director how to move forward from the standoff. Maybe they had to break for lunch while Hitchcock devised the next level of the conflict.
Speaking of blackmail and murder, I've managed to stay current on that new show "Fargo", where Billy Bob Thornton is just killing it, literally and figuratively. It's got some promise, though some fans of the movie say it just doesn't hold up, I'm enjoying it. It's clever and twisty and dark and comic all at the same time.
Also starring John Longden, Cyril Ritchard, Donald Calthrop, Sara Allgood, Charles Paton.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Corona cigars
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