BEFORE: Ah, this sounds more promising - skin! No doubt this is about the seamy underside of 1930's sex clubs, or some early look at striptease artists or burlesque performers, right? Wait, it's about land rights? Ugh, this is going to be another tough one. Linking from "Murder!", Phyllis Konstam carries over.
THE PLOT: An old traditional family and a modern family battle over land in a small English village and almost destroy each other.
AFTER: I'm now about 1/5 of the way through Hitchcock's filmography, and I can state plainly that this last 10 days has been the toughest stretch I've endured yet, for the reasons I've stated before. Who knew that Hitch made so many stuffy family dramas about British people, both rich and poor?
In a way, these films defy everything I've been told about the films of the 1930's. My understanding was that during the Depression, people wanted to escape their troubles, so they would prefer to see films about rich people having a good time - so why did Hitchcock make films that focused on people who were dirt-poor, like in "The Shame of Mary Boyle", and also people who were working-class, like this one? Did this somehow make regular people feel better, to see characters worse off than themselves? It just doesn't make sense.
It turns out that a "skin game" is slang for any dishonest business operation, or any swindle or trick. That would have been nice to know before getting involved with this one. There's another swindle relating to one of the character's pasts, but it's another one of those things so racy that it can't be discussed within the film - again I had to check a film's Wikipedia page to determine what the dark secret was in a woman's history. Curses again on the production code.
NITPICK POINT: I've seen enough episodes of "Storage Wars" to understand a bit about how auctions are supposed to work. When someone bids by silently nodding his head or raising a finger, he's clearly trying to remain anonymous. When the auctioneer portrayed here thanks each bidder by name, he doesn't seem to understand the procedure.
NITPICK POINT #2: So, if you tell a lie to someone about someone else's lie, instead of telling them a truth that is much worse, that's OK? And the lie will be discounted, because it's a lie of course, and easily disproven, but you still have not told them the truth! That's what we call a lie of omission, and it's still a lie.
Also starring Edmund Gwenn, John Longden (last seen in "The Shame of Mary Boyle"), Frank Lawton, C.V. France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, R.E. Jeffrey (also last seen in "Murder!"), Edward Chapman (ditto).
RATING: 3 out of 10 headaches
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