Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Jamaica Inn’ (1939)

picture edited by Laura Lai

 

by Laura Lai/ Review 

Film’s Title: Jamaica Inn

Lead Actors: Charles Laughton (Sir Humphrey Pengallan), Maureen O’Hara (Mary), Robert Newton (James Trehearne), Laslie Banks (Joss), Mary Ney (Patience). 

Director: Alfred Hitchcock 

The movie is based on the novel Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier.

Jamaica Inn is the story of Pengallan…legend. The action is placed on the cost of Cornwell, at the beginning of the 19^th century. A group of wreckers, thieves, and murderers was luring ships to the rocks of the coast stealing all the goods on the ship. The constant repetition of the wrecks grew suspicion among officials who sent an officer to work undercover – James Trehearne (Robert Newton). He mixed with the gang at Jamaica Inn, led by Joss (Laslie Banks) and his wife, Patience (Mary Ney).

            At the inn arrived the niece of Patience, from her recently deceased sister – Mary (Maureen O’Hara). She was a beautiful young woman, with principles and lots of character. Officer Trehearne was convinced that this gang had an informer that provided precise information on the ships to be lured to their doom on the rocks of the Cornish Coast. And the entire movie is a great story involving Mary’s character, James' undercover operation, and Sir Humphrey's (Charles Laughton) duplicity. Laughton made a fabulous role. Absolutely magnificent!

From a technical point of view, the wrecking scenes are impressive with the 1939 technique movie. Both the images and the sound are clear – and this fascinates me to dig more and find out the way the director did it. In the scene of the dialogue between Sir Humphrey and Joss (min. 38-39) the camera shots are suggestive in determining the hierarchy of the characters. It is usually said that each person has his own shadow. Well, Sir Humphrey was such an important person, that he was depicted with two shadows. J I would not disconsider this little detail because Alfred Hitchcock is a film mastermind for whom, theoretically, each detail matters.

From a cultural point of view, or better said from a linguistic point of view, officer Trehearne’s short speech while he was tied up is memorable. It is a one-two minutes scene in which he made an appeal to the consciousness of Patience to release him. His words are well-chosen and they made her consciousness clash with her devotion to her husband. 

This scene from a 1939 movie reminded me of more recent movies. See, for example, Al Pacino, ‘Inch by Inch’ speech, Any Given Sunday here, or Al Pacino, ‘I’ll Show You Out of Order!’ speech, Scent of a Woman here, and Leonardo di Caprio, The Wolf of Wall Street speech here). 

Enjoy the movie!

P.S.: See you in the next Hitchcock movie review! J

Hitchcock Film Series. ‘The Lady Vanishes’ – Book Review

 picture edited by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/Review 

I posted this week my review of the movie The Lady Vanishes (1938) directed by A. Hitchcock. This movie is based on the novel The Wheel Spins (or The Lady Vanishes) written by the British crime author Ethel Lina White (1876-1944). 

Thanks to the Gutenberg Project Australia the book is available free of charge as an eBook. The book is divided into thirty-three chapters and it is a great novel for spy genre lovers, as well as for mystery books lovers. For those reading in English as a foreign language, the book is well crafted, is literary, and its vocabulary should not put too many problems for the readers. This book was of great interest to me from the point of view of the movie. More precisely, I wanted to know things like: What elements from the book did the film director keep? Which one-third of the plot he kept? And why?

            First and foremost, the film director kept the general spy and mystery genre. Second, similarly to the movie, most of the action happens on the train – a night express coming from somewhere in the Balkans, maybe even from Turkey and passing by the Balkans going to Trieste-Milan-Calais; and from there, to London (ch.5). Third, there is a Miss Froy that vanished from the compartment, as well as the complicity of those in the compartment and of the stewards to convince Iris that she was imagining, dreaming, inventing the whole Ms. Froy story. Furthermore, similar to the movie, the disappearance of Ms. Froy involved a doctor and there is an investigative couple: Iris and a young man named Hare.

            Other elements kept in the movie, but slightly adapted are the signature of Ms. Froy on the ‘smoked window’ (ch. 26), Trieste as an execution place (ch. 27), the scene Iris was sedated (ch. 32), and the general ‘shouting, smoking and gesticulation’ (ch. 33) with what the movie actually starts.

            Instead, the film director came up with different sets of characters that deepened the mystery, elaborated more on the execution scene for more action in a spy genre movie, and left aside lots of descriptions of places, and characters’ details that are more appropriate for a book writing than for a movie. Knowing how much to take and how much to leave, makes both the book well-written and the movie well-done. J

In the book, I have not found the expression ‘don’t judge a country by its politics’, but I found ‘[p]ersonally, I should not compare Italy with Piccadilly Circus’ (ch. 24), which might have been the one giving the scriptwriter the idea to come up with something even wiser. Instead, the book contains the formulation of another great observation: 

‘…strangers were caricatures of humanity – blank, insensible, and heartless. While Miss Froy was going to be murdered, no one cared for anything but dinner.’ (ch. 27) 

It is a good observation, but, sadly, a true one. In documentary movies, there are testimonies of illegal property seizing at the beginning of WWII, while nobody was protesting, even going and enjoying holidays. Then, Europe was bombed, artifacts from many museums were seized, and when people realized what was happening, it was too late to react: the whole world was at war.

The characters in this book, which is a piece of art and of literature, only care about their dinner because some of them did not even believe the story of Miss Froy who got vanished. But in real life, some real characters on the stage of life not only do not care about the misfortune of somebody else, but some are even accomplices to it – as the characters in the book. The formulation 'caricature of humanity’ is very artistic - it makes the reader visualize a caricature, and in it, it is humanity depicted. And the scene is better visualized, and Iris's emotions and perceptions are better understood. 

Real life is, usually, beautifully mirrored in art. The artist knows what to take from real life, and what not to so that art has the power to reach the soul. So is with this book and the movie. Ethel Lina White crafted a great spy book, while Alfred Hitchcock adapted it and made it a great spy movie.

Enjoy both the book and the movie! And I'll see you in the next review of Hitchcock’s movies!

Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Lady Vanishes’ (1938)

photo edited by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/ Review 

Film’s Title: The Lady Vanishes 

Lead Actors: Margaret Lockwood (Iris Hendersen), Michael Redgrave (Gilbert), Dame May Whitty (Miss Froy), Paul Lukas (Dr. Hartz)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock 

The movie is based on the novel The Wheel Spins (1936) by Ethel Lina White (you can read the free ebook here).

The Lady Vanishes is a black-and-white thriller and one of the very last movies made by Alfred Hitchcock before moving to Hollywood. 

The action of the movie takes place mainly on the train to London, but the action starts in the hotel next to the station – that was a great opportunity for the characters to get acquainted and for the viewers to get to know the characters. The hotel was crowded and the manager was a polyglot, speaking English, Italian, French, and German – which reminded me of Switzerland when I did not know any German. J Anyway, it would have not made any difference, because the Austrians and Germans themselves do not understand spoken Swiss German – so different they are!

At this hotel, a guitar singer got killed. Then, on the railway platform, a flower pot accidentally hit Ms. Hendersen (Margaret Lockwood), a young woman going to London to get married. A chatty old British lady, Ms. Froy (Dame May Whitty), accompanied her to the train and shared the same compartment, but after Ms. Hendersen woke up from her nap, she realized that Ms. Froy disappeared – actually, vanished.

A conspiracy involving the people in the compartment, two stewards, and a dr. Hartz (Paul Lukas) was trying to convince Ms. Hendersen that she was imagining things, that there was no Ms. Froy, and even developing a plausible theory that this might have been caused by the flower pot that fell on her head in the railway station. The only person who believed her was Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) whom she previously met at the hotel. Together they started looking for Ms. Froy on the whole train.

From a technical point of view, I loved the camera shots, particularly the beginning one, when the camera gets from the outside (a mountain landscape), gets down to a hotel, then to the window of the hotel, and then inside it. This suggests the idea of a story that is going to be told. In this story, my favorite scene is the one in the luggage room, which shows a fight between some characters, with rabbits, pigeons, illusionist chamber that made the scene hilarious. 

From an artistic viewpoint, I loved the idea of an illusionist in the train that creates a diversion. But the fact that Ms. Froy vanished had nothing to do with the illusionist. Second, I loved the idea that the train turned when the story itself was turning - a brilliant idea by Hitchcock! Third, I loved the fact that Ms. Froy wrote her name on the dusted window of the train - an original idea by Hitchcock! Fourth, I loved the wise statement ‘you shouldn’t judge a country by its politics.’ The statement belonged to Ms. Froy and it is also relevant in the current political context when U.S. President Joe Biden meets the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Geneva (Switzerland). This quote is just perfect to remind us that a country like Russia, for example, is more than Putin. For example, Russia is about the many great writers, who entered world literature, whose works are world patrimony; it is about beautiful architecture (in St. Petersburg, for example), and a beautiful language – as there is no such thing as an ugly foreign language. It is about A. Pushkin, N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoyevsky, A. Chekov, M. Gorki, and many other names and classical writing talents who painted in words époques in a great artistic way that is hard, if not impossible, to equal, because they wrote literature. Fifth, I loved the beautiful happy end. 

            I left as last and least an element that stroke me in this 1938 movie. In the train compartment, Ms. Hendersen wanted ‘to ring for an attendant’ for Ms. Froy. Nothing special, right? Well, think again! ‘Ring for an attendant’ from a button applied to the compartment door in a train in 1938? I have not seen it on the trains in 2021! J

Enjoy the movie! 

P.S.: See you in the next film review! Or in the review of the book that inspired this movie. 

Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Downhill’ (1927)

 photo edited by Laura Lai

by Laura Lai/ Review 

Film’s Title: The Downhill

Lead Actors: Ivor Novello (Roddy Berwick), Robin Irvine (Tim Wakeley), Isabel Jeans (Julia Fotheringale), Norman McKinnel (Sir Thomas Berwick)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock 

The Downhill is a black-and-white, silent drama about honor and dignity. It is the story of two friends and schoolmates: Roddy (from a wealthy family) and Tim (a student with a scholarship). Following an incident involving a woman, Roddy is expelled from school one week before the end of the term. Although the incident was Tim’s fault, the woman intentionally accused the innocent Roddy, who preferred to keep silent so that his friend not to lose his scholarship. Roddy had to leave home, and all experiences he lived were from bad to worse, until he returned home in a deplorable condition. He was determined to keep his promise to his friend to death – his own death.

This movie is divided into several chapters: Old Boys’ Team, The World of Make-Believe, The World of Lost Illusions, and Searching, Restless, Sun-light. There are two advantages to having organized the movie structure this way. First, the screenwriter (Eliot Stannard) succeeded in providing a cyclical structure to the movie. Second, this particular unfolding of the story puts the viewer in a good mood after such a long series of misfortunes happening to Roddy in an almost 2-hour movie.

From an artistic point of view that is mainly the job of the director, I liked many things  - but I will stick to two main ones.

            First, I loved the way the director artistically reflected the ‘downhill’ that was happening to a young man in real life. When Roddy was expelled, he took the stairs down; when he had to leave home, he took the subway rolling downstairs; when he got divorced, he took the elevator down; even, when he returned home, there were two-three steps he took down. Is there anything left for the 1927 époque that a character could take to go down and Hitchcock forgot? I don’t think so! J

          Second, I loved the use of light as a symbol. At the end of the chapter The World of the Lost Illusions, the windows of a dancing saloon open. It was then that Roddy realized the degrading place he was frequenting. And, in a brilliant way, the next chapter is called Searching, Restless, Sun-light. 

From a technical point of view, Hitchcock used light for a beautiful scene in the shop, with the waitress that took him responsible for something he did not do, just because his father – Sir Thomas Berwick ‘was rolling in the money’ – in which the characters play behind a curtain of stripes, and light is coming from behind. This is my favorite scene of all. But Hitchcock played with the camera, took shots from all angles, and this helped transmit to the audience the emotions of the characters. It, actually, helped a great deal to communicate although the movie was silent.

Enjoy the movie!

P.S. See you in the next review of Hitchcock’s movies!