“Mr. Baker will give his twelfth talk on accountancy in three minutes.”
“The curtain’s gone up too soon! They’re not dressed!”
“I couldn’t wear this! People will think we’re not married.”
“Don’t you forget you’re coming with me to buy my carpet, too!”
“Go have your dance with the gossip woman. Then she will not look for you.”
“If a woman can’t hold her man, there’s no reason why he should take the blame.”
“I like being shipwrecked! It’s not half as bad as people make out!”

–Rich and Strange

Hitchcock’s Rich and Strange, adapted from a contemporary novel by Dale Collins by Hitchcock, Alma and Val Valentine, is a romantic melodrama that begins as a screwball comedy, continues as a travelogue, segues unpleasantly into a morality play, then throws in a shipwreck before hopping a Chinese junk right back to where it began. Hitchcock later called it “just an adventure story,” though that description hardly does justice to this largely shallow hash of elements.

A young couple, Fred (Henry Kendall) and Emily (Joan Barry, who had previously provided the voice for Anny Ondra’s character in Blackmail), jump at the chance, offered by a rich uncle, to escape the dull routine of their conventional British lives and see the world. On the voyage they fumble through a series of silly misadventures, most of which result from falling foolishly in love with other people. After losing most of their money and nearly losing their lives, they finally return home once more, relieved but not much wiser.

More than anything, Rich and Strange, the director’s 6th talkie, plays very much as a throwback to the director’s silent days. This is true both of small stylistic touches that crop up repeatedly throughout the movie, and of the story it is telling. Hitchcock falls back once more on the “unfaithful lover/awkward triangle” theme that had been a staple of his early films. In tone, this effort is probably closest to 1928’s Champagne, with its frivolous depictions of wealthy revelry and slightly-jarring moralizing.

It is almost as though Hitchcock, after four rather thin and talky stage adaptations in a row, finally saw some material that was a bit more malleable to the cinematic form, and took advantage of it. This is not to say that the movie ultimately succeeds on most levels, merely that there is a noticeable departure from some of the problems of the other early talkies.

The first four minutes of the film have no dialogue at all, and one might almost think that the film is silent at first. In a crowded room full of cubicles, ledgers are closing and people are getting up. It is the end of the day. Throngs of employees fill the halls of the office building, each man wearing an identical black bowler hat, the women also wearing similar attire. It is raining outside, and the employees step out the door, two-by-two in rhythmic unison, opening their umbrellas in a single smooth motion and heading home; all but one, that is. Our hero, Fred Hill, out of step with his fellow office drones, wrestles haplessly with his umbrella for several seconds, but it refuses to open. Grimacing, he braves the rain unprotected.

A camera mounted on the rails pans rapidly past the tightly-packed crowd waiting to board the tube. As it comes to rest they shove their way aboard, and Fred finds himself standing next to an older woman with a garish feather in her hat. He accidentally snatches it out as the train gets underway, but she doesn’t notice until he tries to give it back. Annoyed, he glances at the advertisements that line the walls above the train windows, describing experiences he won’t be having tonight: theater revues and fine dining.

Balancing himself carefully, he lets go of the strap overhead and attempts to open his newspaper, which promptly falls apart as he tries to open it. After wrestling with it for a moment, the first item his eyes fall on bears the headline, “Are you satisfied with your present Circumstances?” As his eyes shift left and right, the answer to the question seems obvious.

To this point, the movie has played as standard silent slapstick, but now Fred arrives home and dialogue enters the picture. Emily is waiting cheerfully with a steak and kidney pudding for dinner, and she irritates him immediately when she asks brightly, “Have you broken your umbrella?” She is busily at work on making herself a new dress on the sewing machine, and she asks Fred whether he’d rather stay at home and listen to the wireless or go out to the pictures. Fred has no interest in either option, and he finally explodes with the frustration of his ordinary life.

Emily is not impressed by his outburst, but just then the mail arrives. Expecting nothing but bills, Fred sorts listlessly through it until he comes upon an unexpected item: a letter from his magic plot device . . . err, that is, rich uncle. The uncle is aware of his nephew’s restlessness, and sees no reason why he should have to wait for the death of a relative to experience life. He can have his inheritance early, and travel the world on it. Fred and Emily are both thrilled by this turn of events, and as the scene fades out, Fred stares rapturously up at the large painting of a ship hanging over the mantle.

At this point Rich and Strange puts another trick from the silents back into circulation: the intertitle. They appear at several points throughout the rest of the story, telling us where we are, when we are, who we’re looking at, what is about to happen and, in at least one case, what has just happened. Perhaps it was meant to evoke some feelings of nostalgia and appreciation for the old days (not so far gone at this point). Perhaps Hitchcock, who, after all, got his start in the business designing intertitles, simply missed them.

Whatever the logic behind their inclusion, the overall effect feels lazy, superfluous and more than a little clumsy. There should be a better way for the audience to tell the difference between Marseilles and the Suez Canal. And, flashing “Fred had met a princess!” on the screen immediately after Fred is introduced to, yes, a princess, is unintentionally hilarious at best.

As the couple crosses the English Channel, Fred has his first bout with seasickness. He feels a bit woozy while trying unsuccessfully to target Emily with the camera lens up on deck and goes below. Hitchcock employs his favorite POV tricks to indicate seasickness here, as in Champagne, by blurring and wobbling the shot as Fred peers through the lens.

The Hills fly through France largely by way of a whirlwind montage, which adds little of substance to the proceedings. Their heads swivel back and forth in close-up shots, interspersed with location footage of the famous landmarks of Paris (all of the location shooting is edited in around the main action taking place on small, mostly interior sets). They attend an extravagant stage revue and Emily is mildly scandalized by the showgirls’ costumes. On the way out she gets felt up in the lobby and seems generally uncomfortable.

She and Fred stay out late drinking, and stagger back to their hotel room with some difficulty. There is some mild amusement here: Fred confusedly believes the elevator dial is a clock and resets his watch, only to have the time change when the elevator moves. As the two climb into their separate Ricky-and-Lucy-style beds. Fred slips and lands on his knees, where he remains for a few moments while he collects himself. Emily, glancing over her shoulder, is convicted by his piety and gets on her knees as well to say her prayers. Fred, rising to his feet once more, spots Emily praying and joins her.

The next day, they board “the big ship bound for the Far East” and meet some of their fellow passengers. Fred soon feels queasy and disappears below-deck, leaving Emily to converse with Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont) and a nameless character referred to as “the old maid” (Elsie Randolph). Randolph’s character, as her title indicates, is a broad stereotype; a parasitic and profoundly irritating gossip who is comical only because she on the screen rather than in the room. Gordon is a genial bachelor on his way back to his post in Asia. With her husband confined to quarters, Emily and he become fast friends.

They sit and talk on deck together for hours, day and night, as the ship makes it way across the Mediterranean. The friendship remains purely platonic, at least on the surface, until one fateful night when they take a walk in a remote corner of the upper deck in an effort to escape from the old maid (who, of course, wants to play a card game). The beauty and solitude of the scene, and the ambiance of the music floating up from below, lead to a passionate embrace, after which they return quickly and quietly to a more populated area of the boat.

The old maid, suspecting nothing, comes upon them again and provides Emily with something she believes will have Fred back on his feet. Sure enough, the next morning he feels well enough to escort his wife up on deck. As they stroll, someone playing a nearby game throws something that hits Fred in the eye. Upset at first, he becomes much less cross when he catches sight of the woman who threw it . . . particularly when he learns that she is a princess (played by Betty Amann).

Now there is no chance of Fred noticing how friendly his wife has become with Commander Gordon, and he doesn’t seem to care whether she notices his feelings towards the Princess or not. It is worth pointing out the fundamental difference in the way each spouse cultivates a relationship on the side. Emily and Gordon both seem a bit ashamed of the attraction they feel for each other, and neither of them has any serious intention of acting on it, or of ending Emily’s marriage. Fred and the Princess are just the opposite. She is brazenly seductive. He is slavishly devoted, and generally behaves like a cad.

As the ship drops anchor at an Egyptian harbor, husband and wife go ashore separately, and the old maid casts about for a victim to come help her bargain for a rug. A bit of visual comedy surrounding this purchase takes up most of this interlude. Gordon and another British officer (referred to only as “the Colonel”) accompany the old maid, who makes a great show of picking out just the right rug. As she pays the vendor, Gordon notices Emily wandering alone through the crowd and goes to join her. The Colonel, too, makes use of the opportunity to escape, leaving the old maid alone and a bit confused.

Somewhere beyond the Suez Canal, a costume ball takes place aboard the ship. Emily goes as a milkmaid and Gordon seems dressed in some sort of 18th-century-style riding cloak. Fred and the Princess both wear Arabic garb. As the old maid, in a shepherdess outfit, extracts a dance from every man in sight, both couples wander away from the crowd. Emily returns to the party after a few minutes, in case Fred is looking for her. However, he is busy getting himself invited back to the Princess’s cabin for an illicit rendezvous.

The Princess slips off to cabin 19, and Fred returns impatiently to dance with the old maid so she won’t wonder where he is later. It is clear, however, that his mind is elsewhere. When she coyly asks him how old her costume makes her look, he absently replies, “Nineteen.” Finally, unable to take anymore, he signals to the band to cut the song short, settles the old maid in a chair, and disappears to “fetch her a drink.” Busily making sure no one is following or watching him, he walks into the wrong cabin at first, then finds the right place and disappears inside.

Sometime later, the four meet up in the dining room and Fred and Emily end up sitting next to each other across from the Princess. She notes innocently that it is “a perfect night for lovers,” prompting husband and wife to steal sidelong glances at one another while they quickly take a drink.

From here, events move on apace. Fred and the Princess plan to run away together. Emily, knowing what’s coming, accepts Gordon’s proposal of marriage on the last night of the voyage. She will return home with him and try to forget how badly Fred has treated her. The ship arrives at its final destination, and Emily hops into a carriage with Gordon. Fred has already set up shop at a hotel with the Princess, and it appears that the two will simply go their separate ways without ever talking about it.

Despite Fred’s behavior, Emily still harbors feelings of guilt about walking out on her marriage. Then, Gordon informs her that the Princess is actually a fraud, a con artist who intends to take all of Fred’s money and leave him in the lurch. Somehow, we have already sensed instinctively that this is the case. A beautiful princess would never attach herself to a towering lackwit like Fred. Emily is torn, but finally decides to leave Gordon and return to warn Fred, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

She arrives at the hotel room, and the Princess leaves them alone. An argument ensues, as Emily attempts to convince her husband of the Princess’s duplicity. He arrogantly refuses to believe her, and finally storms out. While he is gone, a letter arrives from Gordon, declaring his love for Emily but accepting her choice to remain with Fred. Just as she finishes, Fred slowly comes back in with the news that the Princess has absconded with all of their money.

Emily is very supportive, expressing disgust at the other woman’s actions, but Fred, who ought to fool like the greatest fool in the world, continues to behave proudly and express annoyance at his wife. He really is a prize bounder, and his attitude is so off-putting by this point that there is no way he will win back the sympathies of the audience, protagonist or not. As a contemporary review put it, “The hero is unsympathetic, a foolish boor, and the film neither excuses nor explains him.”

In any case, the couple uses the minute amount of cash that remains to them to purchase a spot in the bowels of a steamer headed back to England. They share a small cabin, and are barely on speaking terms until the ship runs into some sort of giant plot device, ripping open the side and allowing water to gush in.

It is late at night, and Fred and Emily are both in bed. The collision knocks something off of a shelf and lands on Fred’s head. Emily rushes to his side to clean the cut, then they both try to get out. Some sort of pipe has fallen in front of the door, trapping them inside and their porthole is already submerged. As water begins to seep into the room under the door, they huddle together on the bed. Sure they are about to die, all the misdeeds of the trip are forgiven and forgotten. Eventually, they fall asleep.

The sequence would be capable of generating more genuine suspense were we not so thoroughly fed up with the main characters by this point in the story. Still, the thought of being trapped on ship that is sinking to the bottom of the ocean is a powerful and affecting one. The situation makes itself felt, even if the characters trapped in the midst of it don’t.

They wake up to find that the ship is still afloat, and they manage to climb out of the porthole and up on deck. Their boat is drifting and deserted of every living thing save a black cat. Still in their pajamas, they find large sailor coats to put on, and a very baggy pair of pants for Emily (another comical dressing scene!).

They wander around a bit and help themselves to some liquor from the bar, but before they can seriously start to wonder what they ought to do a Chinese junk appears alongside. The occupants of the ship don’t appear to be particularly interested in either Fred or Emily, and while they busily loot the derelict the couple invite themselves aboard the neighboring ship and get comfortable.

These particular Chinese sailors are a silent, scary bunch, and Fred and Emily are largely ignored as the ship sails away. There is a pregnant woman on board, and she brings them a meal at one point. Husband and wife tuck heartily into what seems to be a sort of meat stew, enjoying it very much until one of the sailors comes up on deck and tacks the pelt of the black cat to the wall. Later on, the baby is born and Emily is horrified when the father pours cold seawater over his newborn infant. The couple is drawn closer together, not only as a result of their troubles, but because the others on the boat are so totally alien to them.

Their adventures come to an end at last back in their small, ordinary flat in England. The landlady welcomes them joyously home with a warm fire and dinner on the table. Fred glances up distastefully now at the painting of the ship hanging up over the mantle, and it seems unlikely he will ever set foot on another boat again if he can help it. After the landlady leaves, the couple share a private kiss, fully reconciled at last, but a few seconds later they have started another trivial argument about the future as the final fade-out creeps in.

In an interview decades later, Hitchcock recalled that, “There was an amusing sequence at the end […] after it’s all over, they meet me in the lounge. This is my most devastating appearance in a picture. They tell me their story, and I say, ‘No, I don’t think it’ll make a movie.’ And it didn’t.” The scene he described is not known to exist in any version of Rich and Strange, but it is a very telling image of how the director felt about this stage in his career in general (as well as this film in particular).

The movie did not do well, either critically or financially. A contemporary reviewer noted, “Admirers of Mr. Hitchcock’s work will be dissatisfied […] Mr. Hitchcock is clearly out of form.” Hitch’s time at British International Pictures, which seemed so promising during his silent period there, was finally drawing to a rather pedestrian close with an unfortunate run of forgettable adaptations during the early years of sound pictures.

Next Week: Hitchcock directs a train wreck

Posted in Hitchcock, Scholarship

“He wants it for spite. We want it for sentiment.”
“Lies between the Duke’s and Squire Hillcrest’s. An emerald isle. No allusion to Ireland, gentlemen! Perfect peace in the century!”
“Dodo, may I spit in his eye or something?”
“Well, what’s the meaning of it, eh? Is it sheer impudence or lunacy or what?”
“His car. It always seems to make more noise than any other.”
“And me six thousand out of pocket? No. No, I’ll keep it, and hold it over you!”
“What’s gentility worth, if it can’t stand fire?”

–The Skin Game

After Murder! Hitchcock took on John Galsworthy’s popular stage play The Skin Game. His 3rd stage adaptation in a row, The Skin Game is a story of old money and new money coming into conflict in rural England. Hitchcock and Alma took on the adaptation again, and brought on several of the players from the previous films, including Phyllis Konstam, John Longden and Edward Chapman. The movie features Edmund Gwenn, a major star already who would go on to win an Oscar in the late ’40s for his performance as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street.

The story of The Skin Game did not lend itself easily to Hitchcock’s specialty, but he at least seemed more determined to avoid the complete absence of cinematic life from Juno and the Paycock. It helps that most of the performers are top-notch, particularly Gwenn as Mr. Hornblower and Phyllis Konstam as the hapless Chloe, and that the story makes for reasonably-compelling social drama.

The Skin Game concerns two families: the Hillcrests and the Hornblowers. The Hillcrests are minor nobility who have occupied their beautiful corner of the English countryside for centuries. The Hornblowers have recently made a fortune in industry and are setting up shop on Hillcrest turf, spoiling the scenery with factories and turning old tenants out of their cottages to make room for young workers. Determined to put a stop to Hornblower’s schemes for the neighborhood, Mrs. Hillcrest enlists the help of an unsavory underling named Dawker and they dig up some damning dirt from the past. The ensuing blackmail defeats the Hornblowers entirely, but at what cost to the Hillcrests?

The film begins, as most of Hitchcock’s previous films with rural settings do, by establishing the scene with various shots of the countryside. Jill Hillcrest, atop the traditional vehicle of the idle rich (a horse), meets Rolf Hornblower, driving a shiny new automobile, in a country lane and they discuss the tension between their respective families. Moving on, the elder Mr. Hornblower arrives at the Jackman cottage to inform them that they’ll have to move out immediately, despite having promised Squire Hillcrest when he initially bought the land that he’d leave all of the original tenants in peace.

The two rush immediately over to the Hillcrest home to complain to the squire, and inform him of Hornblower’s more sinister plan: to buy “the Centry,” a gorgeous tract of land bordering the Hillcrest property, and tear it up with industrial development. As the Jackmans continue talking, Hillcrest wanders to his window, tuning them out as he imagines his lush backyard view transformed into a skyline of ugly chimneys belching foul-smelling smoke. Although his primary concern is for the tenants, his wife and his agent, Dawker, are far more pragmatic and selfish. As soon as she gets the news, Mrs. Hillcrest dispatches Dawker to convince the owner of the Centry not to sell to Hornblower, who happens to arrive in person just as Dawker leaves the house.

Hornblower and the older Hillcrests manage to annoy each other thoroughly in the ensuing conversation. The Hillcrests are disdainful and condescending, and Hornblower expresses his impatience with their stodginess and his anger at the repeated snubbing of his daughter-in-law, Chloe, by Mrs. Hillcrest. Jill comes home in the midst of this and is generally frustrated with the squabbling elders.

As Hornblower leaves, Dawker meets him returning the other way and goes on to report to the Hillcrests that he has persuaded the owner to put the land up for auction rather than sell it to Hornblower outright. Dawker and Mrs. Hillcrest retire to scheme in private, leaving Jill to further expound on her dislike of “rows” once she is alone with her father.

The scene jumps to the day of the auction (with a seamless cut from father and daughter looking out over the Centry to a picture of it in extreme close-up on an auction poster). Everyone is arriving at once, and Chloe Hornblower pauses to greet the Hillcrests as they pass by. Mrs. Hillcrest, however, turns up her nose and pushes quickly past as though the other woman weren’t there, outraging Chloe’s husband and father-in-law.

The younger woman follows Mrs. Hillcrest inside and tries to engage her in conversation. Mrs. Hillcrest is civil, but makes it plain that she doesn’t want to talk. As the auction prepares to get underway, Chloe spots a man standing with Dawker on the other side of the room and goes noticeably pale. Jill rushes to her side with some smelling salts, and she seems to recover, at least somewhat.

Meanwhile, Dawker has joined Hornblower in the front row of the room, while the Hillcrests sit together on the sidelines to watch. Dawker will bid against Hillcrest up to 6,000 pounds. If Hillcrest wishes him to exceed that sum, he is to blow his nose loudly. When he is ready for Dawker to stop, he will blow his nose again. The auctioneer spends a few minutes talking up the property, and has his assistant read the legal fine print out loud.

As the assistant reads, the microphone seems to have been deliberately placed too far away for us to hear what he is saying, and all we hear is muttering. Someone in the audience yells for him to speak up, but he finishes up without having spoken a single audible word. It comes off as a mildly amusing way to handle a boring patch of dialogue, but the way it is carried off smacks tangibly of a blooper rather than an intentional gag. The result is confusing and off-putting as much as it is funny.

In any case, the auction sequence is by far the most exciting, lively scene in the film; genuinely suspenseful with a few surprising twists. Hitchcock keeps the camera in constant motion, mostly panning rapidly between the competing bids of Dawker and Hornblower, with occasional cuts to Hillcrests or the auctioneer. The price of the property creeps inevitably above 6,000 pounds, and Hillcrest (after a slight hesitation) blows his nose, muttering to his family that if the bid should pass 7,000 he’s not sure they can stand it. Finally, he is forced to blow his nose again and Dawker stops bidding. However, just as the auctioneer is about to declare the property sold, Hillcrest jumps in and begins to bid for himself.

The price continues to climb on into the 9,000 range, but Hornblower seems determined. It seems he will be victorious until the mysterious man in the back of the room puts in one final bid and snatches the property from under Hornblower’s nose. The Hillcrests are thrilled, certain that an agent of the neighboring Duke has stepped in with the winning bid. It seems that they have been victorious, but just as they prepare to drive away in triumph, Hornblower pokes his head into their car and reveals that the winning bid was placed by his agent, not the Duke’s. Meanwhile, Chloe is still looking very unwell, and it seems that Dawker has unearthed something about her that she would very much have rather kept buried.

Mrs. Hillcrest decide more drastic measures are required to preserve the sanctity of the countryside, and writes to Hornblower requesting a meeting where she will reveal “something of the utmost importance” regarding his daughter-in-law. Hornblower takes the message straight to Chloe, who claims to have no idea what Mrs. Hillcrest might mean, unless she intends to tell Hornblower that Chloe’s father once declared bankruptcy. Hornblower laughs this off and leaves Chloe alone with her brother-in-law. Throughout this scene and the surrounding sequences, Hitchcock uses a combination of close-ups on Chloe’s stricken features and wider shots that make her appear both trapped and isolated within the frame, emphasizing the desperation and pathos of her situation.

Claiming a fierce headache, Chloe goes into the garden to get some air and, by prior arrangement, meets Dawker in the shadows. She tries everything she can think of (begging, bargaining, threatening) to persuade him to leave her out of the family feud, to no effect. He claims he has no choice and the matter is out of his hands, although he expresses a cavalier sort of sympathy that her happiness should be a collateral victim of the altercation. Retiring to her room with her husband, Chloe desperately but subtly attempts to ensure his love for her, going so far as to tell him that she is carrying his child (a claim that is not definitively confirmed or refuted).

Hornblower arrives at the Hillcrest home with Chloe in tow, demanding to know the meaning of the letters Mrs. Hillcrest has been sending him. She and Dawker have sequestered their star witnesses in a nearby room in preparation for the meeting. They tell Hornblower that his daughter-in-law was once a prostitute, or as they put it, accompanied men to hotels in order to help them get a divorce. Hornblower is outraged by the accusation and calls Chloe in with the intention of hearing her deny the charge and forcing Dawker and Mrs. Hillcrest to apologize. She does deny it, but then Dawker produces two of the men that she once worked for, and her jig is up.

Defeated and deflated, Hornblower sends Chloe out and waits to hear what arrangement Mrs. Hillcrest wishes to propose. He still has a bit of fight left, and they eventually agree that he will keep the Centry undeveloped, as stipulated by his signature on a legal document produced by Dawker. Meanwhile, Dawker and Mrs. Hillcrest both swear on a Bible that they will not reveal what they know about Chloe to anyone.

That night, Jill and Hillcrest sit quietly, speculating about what might have transpired earlier and agreeing that it couldn’t have been anything good. Chloe sneaks in through the open door to the garden and hides behind the curtain, listening. Jill discovers her there a few moments later and they invite her in to sit down. She is very distressed and tells them that her husband is quite agitated and is coming to demand an explanation. She begs them to make up a convincing lie that will allay his darker fears. Hillcrest doesn’t like the idea of lying, but he and Jill soon agree that they will say Chloe left a previous employer under a cloud of suspicion regarding a problem with the books.

Charles Hornblower arrives right on schedule, and Chloe dives back behind the curtain as he enters the room. He wants to know where his wife is, and declares Hillcrest’s explanation an outright lie, claiming he’s just had the full story from Dawker. Jill and Hillcrest attempt to calm him, but he is too upset and wants nothing more to do with Chloe.

Jill goes to the curtain and finds that Chloe has disappeared outside. Charles rushes out after her, and Jill and Hillcrest, fearing the worst, follow. Soon, they find that Chloe has attempted to drown herself in the pond, and may have succeeded. Not to break the mood, but the story goes that Hitchcock originally filmed a scene of Chloe throwing herself into the pond, and demanded that Phyllis Konstam dunk herself several times while the camera rolled. All of these takes eventually ended up on the cutting room floor, and it is possible that Hitch never intended to use the scene in the first place.

As the anxious searchers pull Chloe out of the water and seek medical attention, Hornblower arrives and declares that he is ruined in the area, as word of the scandal has somehow gotten out. He declares a scathing hatred for every Hillcrest in earshot and promises to do them any ill turn he can think of in the future as he leaves with a possibly-dead Chloe (and perhaps his unborn grandchild as well).

After everyone has left, the Jackmans arrive to thank Squire Hillcrest for intervening on their behalf, as they will now be permitted to return to their cottage. He is too disheartened to feign courtesy, and after they leave he expresses feeling ashamed of the entire affair to his wife. Meanwhile, Rolf Hornblower and Jill meet one final time out in the garden. They have nothing to say to each other, and simply clasp hands before parting again, probably forever. The scene cuts to a final shot of a large, old tree (possibly located on the Centry, possibly wholly symbolic) being noisily felled by a group of workmen.

The Skin Game was probably a rather engaging theatrical experience, particularly at the time, dealing with the human element of some of the social and cultural turmoil that England was experiencing in the years after World War I. Hitchcock successfully translates this element onto the screen. However, beyond its appeal as a historical and literary curiosity, very little distinguishes the film as the work of the famous director and even less sets it apart from other examples of early sound cinema in Britain.

1929’s Blackmail should have represented a major breakthrough for Hitchcock’s career, but throughout the early 1930s his cinematic work would continue to languish in a grim purgatory of often-dull, second-rate adaptations and fantastically unsuitable projects. After an initially-exciting rush freedom and creative control four years before, Hitchcock’s treatment by British International Pictures was by now looking depressingly similar to the situation which had first prompted him to abandon Gainsborough.

Next Week: Hitchcock goes globetrotting

Posted in Hitchcock, Scholarship

“People ought to be ashamed of themselves, kicking up all that racket at this time of night!”
“I assure you, Inspector, I’m not the other woman in this case.”
“I presume, sir, that an ugly woman would have very little chance at your hands.”
“She had a quick changeover from a barmaid to a Salvation Army lass, and it told on her. There’s no doubt it told on her.”
“That was me. Or was it I? Do you know, Markham? I never know.”
“Yes, that’s him alright. Dressed up as a woman, eh? Always was very good at that.”
“Now, my dear, you must save those tears. They’ll be very, very useful . . . in my new play.”

–Murder!

Following his “photograph of a stage play,” Hitchcock’s next project seemed like a recipe for more of the same: another stage-to-screen adaptation. This one, however, was a murder mystery, originally adapted for the stage by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson from their own novel of the same title: Enter Sir John. Hitchcock wrote the screenplay with Walter Mycroft (the brains behind Champagne), with Alma once again receiving credit for the scenario. The production was filmed simultaneously in German and English, with different casts performing on the same sets and Hitchcock directing both versions. Whether inspired by the film’s genre or simply determined to exercise some more obvious creative control, Hitch managed to enliven Murder! with stylistic touches to a far greater degree than his previous effort.

Despite the title, the murder takes place off-screen just before the movie begins. Actress Edna Druce is found dead in a room with fellow performer Diana Baring (Norah Baring), who is sitting in a dazed state with a bloody poker on the floor next to her. Diana claims to have no memory of what transpired between her and Edna, and so she is quickly convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. However, one of the jurors, Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall), finds that he is not at all convinced of her guilt. An actor himself, he sets out to apply the principles of his art to the investigation of this real-life mystery so that he may clear the lovely young woman’s name.

The film opens on a shot of a deserted village street in the dead of night, the peace of the scene already shattered by a loud scream and a persistent banging noise. A few birds fly out from under the eaves of one house, and a cat streaks away up the street as various windows begin to open and heads emerge. Two of the heads belong to Ted and Doucie Markham (played by Edward Chapman, from Juno and the Paycock, and Phyllis Konstam, respectively). Ted is the stage manager of the acting troupe and Doucie is one of the performers.

As the two wonder what is going on, Doucie spots a policeman, but when she points him out to Ted, he has disappeared. Soon, a different policeman appears, and a small crowd begins to gather around him in front of the house that produced the disturbance. Ted and Doucie struggle into their clothes as we hear snatches of conversation down below. That is, I say we see the couple getting dressed. In reality, we see Ted’s shadow on the wall as he puts his clothes on, but the camera is focused entirely on Doucie (at the least the fourth time that Hitchcock had filmed a woman dressing or undressing before the camera). As with the dressing scene in The Pleasure Garden, Doucie’s frantic hopping and wriggling into her clothing seems largely intended for comic effect.

The most immediately obvious way in which Hitchcock enlivens the long stretches of dialogue this time is by keeping the camera almost constantly in motion. The best examples of this are the three main stretches of expository set-up during the first third of the film. First, after the crowd of locals (led by the policeman) stumbles onto the scene of the murder, Diana’s landlady goes to make her some tea, accompanied by Doucie. The two discuss what they have just seen, establishing which characters are members of the acting troupe and noting that Diana is generally rather well-liked, but was known to be carrying on a long and bitter feud with the murdered woman. While they talk, the landlady walks back and forth between the kitchen and the breakfast room. There is a chair on the right side of each room, and Doucie follows behind, chattering constantly and settling into the chair for a few seconds each time before being forced to get up and move to the other room.

Second, in the rather clever police inquiry scene, two detectives show up backstage during a performance. As they ask various actors questions, they are constantly interrupted by “Oh, there’s my cue,” as their subject drops into character and steps on-stage. In addition to the two Markhams, the officers talk with a man named Handel Fane (Esme Percy), whose specialty is acting in drag, and Ion Stewart (Donald Calthrop, the villain from Blackmail) who has the part of a policeman in the play. While the scene is quite humorous, it proves to be fairly linear in building an even stronger case against Diana. Little do the police (or the audience) realize, but a vital clue is played out before our very eyes in this scene (more on that later).

Third, there is Diana’s trial. We enter the scene just as the closing arguments are winding down, and the jury is sent off to begin their deliberations. Most of these jurors are very eccentric-looking characters, and the camera moves almost constantly between them. Although we are told very little about them, they represent easily-recognizable “types” thanks to elements such as dress, choice of smoking paraphernalia, build, facial expression, etc. The scene is intentionally quite humorous in places, before it gets down to the serious business of the final conviction.

The deliberations are quite long (a full 15 minutes), and rather reminiscent of a reverse-version of 12 Angry Men. The foreman outlines the facts of the case and a vote is called for. Seven of the jurors vote guilty. Two abstain, one on the grounds that the whole idea of punishment (capital or otherwise) is “barbarous,” though he soon sullenly signs off on the guilty verdict. The other seems to be a bit “slow,” and was confused by the defense’s statement that the accused was “in a fit of daytime sleepwalking” when in fact the murder was committed at night. He, too, votes guilty.

Then there are the three “not guilty” votes. The first, a woman (Violet Farebrother, the horrid mother from Easy Virtue), is quite taken by the psychological angle of the defense. She seems to think it is quite clear that Diana should be found innocent by reason of temporary insanity or “disassociation.” One of the other female jurors points out that, even if that were true, one would never know when Diana might kill again, which convinces the first woman to change her vote. The second not guilty vote comes from a rotund, cigar-smoking, walrus-moustached man who essentially thinks that Diana looks far too nice to have murdered anyone. He is easily convinced to change his vote, leaving one dissenter.

That dissenting voter (whom we now see for the first time) proves to be Sir John. He doesn’t believe that Diana has behaved in a way that a guilty woman would, and thinks the prosecution has failed to address the possibility that another person might have been able to commit the crime. Of course, this is merely instinctual on his part, and the other members of the jury gather tightly around him, slowly wearing him down. His protests become increasingly feeble until, finally, he agrees to the guilty verdict. Hitchcock employs a unique (and ultimately rather poor) sound technique here, as the other jurors build up a rhythmic battery of objections, finally chanting repeatedly in unison, “Any answer to that, Sir John?” The attempt is to expressionistically show how Sir John succumbs to the peer pressure of the group, but the chant is too jarringly unnatural to succeed.

The jury moves back out into the courtroom to present the verdict, but the camera remains in the same room. Rather than show us the reaction of the court (and particularly of the accused), we watch as a janitor tidies up while we listen to the foreman and the judge talk in the next room. This visual disconnect from the proceedings emphasizes the emotional detachment of the majority of the jury, and of the entire process. Speaking of emotional distance, it is worth noting here that it will later be revealed that Sir John had some prior association with Diana Baring. I can’t say for certain, but it seems unlikely that British jury policy of the 1930s can be so far different from our own that this association would not have invalidated his sitting on the jury in the first place. Then again, he could easily have lied about it if asked, or simply not realized who she was until later. Chalk it up as a minor plot oddity.

Hitchcock does one other interesting thing with the sound in Murder!, employed in both the next scene and a previous one. He employs the first known instance in film of a character’s internal monologue inserted as voice-over. First, after Diana is hauled away to prison, the scene cuts to people buying their tickets for the next day’s show, then to the curtain. As it rises, the scene transitions again and we find that the curtain has risen on Diana’s cell, where she sits calmly with a quiet smile on her face. As she stares off into space, we hear her imagining the performance going on at the theater.

Later, in a more frequently-cited scene, Sir John is standing in his bathroom shaving and listening to music on the radio. As the notes wash over him, he remembers something that he hadn’t thought to bring up during the deliberations: Diana seemed quite sure that neither she nor Edna had touched a drop of the brandy that was on the table in the room. And yet, the container was empty. Who drank that brandy? We hear his voice as he considers all of this and what it means, and determines to get to the bottom of things himself. The piece coming over the radio is a well-known bit from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and the monologue seems to have been written so that the more dramatic statements coincide with the dramatic swells of the music.

In setting up this sequence, Hitchcock opens with a shot of the building which Sir John lives in, then moves inside to the elevator, up to his outer door, into his lavish sitting room, and finally into the bathroom itself. In addition to establishing Sir John as a wealthy and influential character, the scene seems to be drawing us further and further into his private sanctum as a build-up to our entry all the way into his unspoken thoughts. The effect of the voice-over, in those days before post-production sound editing, was achieved by having a full orchestra playing the music that was supposed to be coming from the radio, while simultaneously playing a recording made by the actor as he modified his expression for the camera to coincide with what he is supposed to be “thinking.” The effect ends up coming off rather well.

To aid in his investigation, he enlists two of the people who were closest to the events of the case: Ted and Doucie Markham. Together, the three knock about the scene of the crime and Sir John entertains further doubts: he learns of the mysterious disappearing policeman that Doucie saw and discovers that the landlady could have mistaken a man’s voice speaking in a falsetto for a woman’s voice (she claims she heard Edna and Diana quarreling). Most important of all, he finds a cigarette lighter that one of the actors has left behind in a dressing room with a broken wash basin. The basin is located just below the room’s lone window, and would make an ideal step up or down.

It is around this point that Hitchcock makes his cameo appearance. As Sir John and the Markhams leave Diana’s landlady and go out into the street, he strolls by from left to right with a woman on his arm. One wonders whether this could have been Alma, however she is completely obscured by Hitchcock’s prodigious profile, and there is no record of her having appeared in front of the camera in any of his films.

Next he goes to visit Diana in prison (in a visitiation cell which is deliciously stark) and attempts to question her further. She is very reluctant to discuss the case, and there is obviously some chemistry between them. It is also obvious that there is something she hasn’t told anyone. Her story of remembering nothing seems to be not quite true, and it seems that the murdered woman was trying to tell her something terrible about a fellow actor which she didn’t want to hear. Sir John can get no more out of her at this point, but he doesn’t need to. He feels sure that he needs to find the cross-dressing actor, Fane, who seems to have dropped out of sight since the trial.

What follows is a rather brilliant little montage showing the search for Fane. Showing is actually inaccurate, as the audience only hears Sir John and Markham discussing the ongoing search. What we see are a series of images which heighten the tension and raise the stakes at this late point in the film. First, a recurring shot of a shifting weather vane, representing the hunt in all directions. Second, an image of Diana pacing circles around her tiny cell, shot from the upper corner of the room. Finally, the shadow of a gallows cast on a brick wall which slowly grows upwards as the camera zooms very slowly in on the noose, showing how time is running out for Diana. The montage ends with a satisfied voice-over declaring, “Got him at last!” just as the camera reaches the noose.

It turns out that Fane is working as a female trapeze artist in a traveling circus. Sir John has hatched an idea which he hopes will be able to entrap the murderer. Or, more accurately, he has stolen an idea from Hamlet. He will write out his idea of how the murder transpired in play form, then have Fane read the part of the murderer and watch how he reacts. The plan goes off without a hitch, and the results are most satisfactory. By the end of the reading, they know Fane is the murderer, and he knows they know. Nevertheless, he ducks out of Sir John’s office before they confront him. (After all, they really have no evidence at this point.)

More importantly, allowing Fane to leave the office makes a much more dramatic Hitchcockian climax possible. Sir John and Markham show up in Fane’s dressing room before his performance that night and find him sealing an envelope and applying the finishing touches to his make-up. Any discussion will have to wait until after the act, though. As the other two watch from the wings, Fane enters the tent and climbs the ladder to begin his performance on the trapeze. As he goes into his high-altitude act he is obviously shaken.

Swinging back and forth on the trapeze, Diana’s face appears before him (much to his consternation). He is so off his game, in fact, that it seems he might be about to fall to his death. He makes it off the trapeze and stands looking out from the top of the ladder. Then he proceeds to pull a nearby rope over, knot the end into a noose, slip it over his neck and leap. The whole tent erupts in chaos, and Fane’s fellow performers take his body down and carry it back to his dressing room. There it is discovered that the envelope we saw him seal earlier is addressed to Sir John, and contains what amounts to a full confession.

It seems that Diana was protecting him because they were in love, and his dirty secret was that he was a “half-caste” (a person of mixed race). On the whole, this seems a bit disingenuous considering the character’s propensity for posing as a woman. It comes as no surprise to learn that in the original novel, Fane’s secret was that he was homosexual. Up to now, Hitchcock had only toyed in the vaguest sense with any portrayals of transvestism or homosexuality, however these themes would show up much more prominently in some of his later films (though often kept in the closet, as it is here).

Another recurring Hitchcockian element, of course, is the wrongfully accused victim of justice run amok. In this case, the victim is a very passive female character who is forced to rely on a male proxy to do the investigative legwork (much like the Daisy and Alice characters in The Lodger and Blackmail). In any case, Diana is soon freed from prison into the waiting arms of Sir John, who promptly casts her as the female lead opposite himself in a new play. The final scene shows what is presumably the final scene of that play, as their characters embrace on the stage and the curtain comes down to applause from the audience before the final fade-out.

Murder! is not entirely successful in leaving the trappings of its origins on the stage behind. Quite the contrary, it cleverly brings certain theatrical elements into play to its advantage (toying with rising and falling curtains and so forth). This is, after all, a story that is closely concerned with not only the stage, but various elements of acting and theatricality in general. There is a well-developed thematic examination of life imitating art and, more importantly, vice-versa running just beneath the surface throughout the film.

Sir John methods as a detective are ostensibly informed by his experience as an actor on the stage, a fact which he references more than once. Nearly every character is “performing” in some sense. Sir John ensnares the real killer through the conventions of the stage performance. Earlier, Fane does a quick change out of a dress and into a policeman’s uniform before the clueless eyes of the police, mirroring the way he had imitated a woman’s voice to fool Diana’s landlady then slipped away in the confusion disguised as a policeman. Then, of course, there is the fact that the movie ends with the hero and heroine sharing the traditional passionate embrace, except that they are also acting for the audience in front of the stage, who are in turn only pretending to be an audience for our benefit. Hitchcock would go on to revisit some of these themes two decades later in Stage Fright.

In the meantime, Murder! manages to be a reasonably entertaining and engaging bit of Hitchcockian fluff. Ultimately, there is a great deal that is not adequately explained, and much of what is supposed to have transpired seems suspect if exposed to intense scrutiny. However, many methods and techniques the director would employ to much greater effect later on are clearly recognizable here. This would mark yet one more highly successful foray by Hitchcock into the territory of crime and suspense. One critic remarked, “[Alfred Hitchcock] has produced a picture of which any country might be proud, and has shown that when so minded we can make films superior in intelligence and style to any submitted to us by America or Germany.” One can only wonder how it had already taken so long for the studio powers to recognize that, in this genre, the still-young director’s true talent could be expected to deliver on a consistent basis.

Next Week: Hitchcock photographs more theater

Posted in Hitchcock, Scholarship