BEFORE: Just in case you thought I was watching that scary horror film from a few years back - no, this is Alfred Hitchcock's next feature, from 1927, when he decided to give sports a try. I can't think of a stranger occurence than the large, corpulent Hitchcock being interested in a sport that involves some kind of physical activity.
Linking from "The Lodger", Marie Ault was also in a 1927 film called "Roses of Picardy" with Lillian Hall-Davis, this film's lead actress. Eventually Hitchcock will start making cameos in his films, and I won't have to worry about this.
THE PLOT: Two boxers compete for the love of a woman.
AFTER: Ah, but Hitch had to throw a love triangle into the mix, and a (perhaps) unfaithful woman. Another shameless hussy (who hurt you, Alfred Hitchcock, WHO was she?) and she's dating her long-time love, an amateur boxer, and the more seasoned pro who takes him on as a sparring partner. No doubt there's an unscrupulous manager type who's promising the kid a shot at the title if he just plays his cards right and waits for his moment...
Well, no doubt that's what we'd hear if there was dialogue, but I'm still in the silent phase of Hitchcock's career. If you watch this, you really get an appreciation for films after sound was added - that just brings so much to the table in a boxing film. You really need to hear the DING of that bell, the roar of the crowd, and those great sound effects of punches landing on an opponent's torso. I watched a version that had a music track, and it was the SAME monotonous music throughout the entire film, whether it was a fight scene, or a love scene, or a scene where people are just having a drink. Yeah, movies kind of sucked back in the 1920's.
There weren't too many dialogue cards here, which is good, but that also meant that some of the dialogue was hard to figure out, so I think it's a delicate balance that needs to be struck. The dialogue posted on screen shouldn't slow the film down, but neither should its absence make the film hard to follow.
I'm not sure if the title refers to the boxing ring, or a wedding ring, or the circle formed by the three lovers and their friends - I suspect Hitch was engaging in a bit of wordplay.
Later in the film, the young boxer, Jack, is married to Nellie, but the marriage has gone flat, so she looks to the older boxer for excitement and comfort. Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the plot of "Hitchcock" from a couple nights ago.
This film and "The Lodger" sort of remind me of the student films I made and viewed at NYU back in a long-ago time called the 80's. By that I mean that the ideas are sort of half-formed, and it feels like storylines are started without a clear idea of where they're going to end up. In other words, I like the set-up of this film, but they either didn't know which way to take it, or the story started to drift in an unplanned way. I remember I made a short film about a man who faced a killer in his dreams every night, and I shot the scenes of the killer in Central Park starring a college roommate, and then shot the scenes of the man having the dream at Harvard University, where a high-school friend was going to college. Then I realized too late that I needed some kind of final confrontation between the two characters, and setting this up was going to be impossible without bringing one actor to the other, which I couldn't afford to do. So, no resolution then.
Also starring Carl Brisson, Ian Hunter, Forrester Harvey, Gordon Harker.
RATING: 3 out of 10 sideshow acts
No comments:
Post a Comment