Feature by Dave
Hall
Films: The Ring (1927), Champagne, The Farmer's Wife, The Manxman
(all 1928), Blackmail (1929), Murder! (1930), The Skin Game
(1931), Rich and Strange, Number Seventeen (both 1932).
All nine films in this varied and
fascinating new box set were directed by Hitchcock in an
incredibly fertile six-year period between 1927 and 1932
(in all, he directed 15 features in this time – no
development hell at British International Pictures, then).
The main curiosity here is the effervescent-sounding silent
comedy Champagne, re-mastered, with a new soundtrack and
currently not available elsewhere on DVD. There's plenty
more of interest, though, including the mesmerising thriller
Blackmail, and remastered editions of The Ring, The Farmer's
Wife and The Manxman, all with new soundtracks. The notable
absence among contemporary films is Hitchcock's first thriller,
The Lodger (1927), but otherwise the developing talents of
the master are on full view.
This period spanned by this collection
saw the coming of sound in British film, a development
that Hitchcock had surprisingly mixed feelings about. He
feared that it would bring an end to the artistry of the
great silent directors, and so it's all the more striking
how innovatively he uses the fledgling technology right
from the start. Blackmail was his and the British film
industry's first sound film, and as well as the celebrated “knife…knife…KNIFE!” scene
(where all dialogue other than that one piercing word is
muffled), we hear some of the sound design techniques that
Hitchcock would use throughout his career: repetitive, almost
subliminal noise (whistling, birdsong etc) to build tension,
for example.
This experimentation is clearly evident
in the other sound films in the collection: in the absorbing
mystery story Murder!, we hear a courtroom verdict, but
the camera lingers on a clerk tidying up the jury room
(and therefore stays with the doubts of one of the jurors).
In The Skin Game, the sound design adds a comic touch:
the clerk at an auction house reads out the “small print” in
an inaudible murmur. And in a typical piece of voyeurism,
the discovery of a body in Murder! is heard but not seen:
we focus instead on a neighbour wrestling with her underclothes.
This use of the subliminal was a trick Hitchcock had already
developed visually in his silent movies: in sporting drama
The Ring, the married female lead keeps a photograph of her
lover on the piano, where his image glows with an unearthly
halo, making him the focal point in the room. (Later, Hitchcock
famously pulled the same trick with a light bulb in a glass
of milk in Suspicion.) And in The Manxman, the intermittent
flash from a lighthouse warns the protagonists of the misery
to come.
This being Hitchcock, there are more than enough visual
flourishes in this collection to keep the eye entranced:
the use of light and shadows in the expressionist opening
to Number Seventeen is unsettling enough to make us fear
that Nosferatu himself is about to materialise; in other
films, whip pans, stop motion and subjective camerawork are
used; sea-sickness, drunkenness and tears are conveyed by
use of image distortion and lighting; and there are vertiginous
camera angles, often from the top of very high staircases.
The shadow of the gallows hangs over more than one of the
films.
Thematically, too, many Hitchcock
motifs are in place. False accusations of murder, people
caught up in events they cannot control, the psychological
and emotional turmoil that bubble up from the dark depths
of the psyche – all served
up with plenty of black comedy. It's noticeable that only
three of the collection can be classed as “thrillers”:
Blackmail, Murder! and the batty comedy-thriller Number Seventeen.
This was the time that Hitchcock was starting to be lauded
as the master of suspense. Perhaps the commercial failure
of some of the other works in this collection, such as the
feisty and fluid comedy adventure Rich and Strange, convinced
him to live up to the name. Certainly, not all the dramatic
films in the collection are instantly recognisable as the
director's work. The romantic comedy The Farmer's Wife is
the least Hitchcockian of the collection, though it has plenty
of subtitled humour. And his showmanship seems a little stifled
by the class-conscious drama The Skin Game.
Nevertheless, this is essential viewing
for the Hitchcock connoisseur – from the destructive
love triangles of The Ring and The Manxman through the
tight as a bow tension of Blackmail, via the morally muddy
Murder! maze, and the witty and slightly surreal Rich and
Strange, to the eccentric and exhilarating box of tricks
that is Number Seventeen. There are even two early cameo
appearances by the man himself.
· Extras
· Alternative ending to Murder!
· Introduction to all films by director/film historian
Noel Simsolo
· Scenes from the original, silent version of Blackmail
(1928), and takes with Anny Ondra
· A 52-minute documentary: Hitchcock's Early Works with
Claude Chabrol and Bernard Eisenschitz
· Picture galleries for all films
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