The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: The First Five Movies
Sigh, it feels like such a short while ago that I decided to rewatch all of the Alfred Hitchcock moves in reverse order, and now four months later I have done it. It is always a little bittersweet to reach the end of a journey, but it was such a fun voyage. Let's go back to where it all began!
Here is our watchlist for today, and we'll be talkng about these movies in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order.
The Pleasure Garden (1925) The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) Downhill (1927) Easy Virtue (1928)* The Ring (1927)
*Not sure why the year listed for Easy Virtue is 1928, but that's what it was on the list that I copy/pasted from so we'll stick with it. The order of these movies varies by the list that you look at.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the movie that isn't on the list. Hitchcock's second movie was The Mountain Eagle, but no prints of the movie survive today. Why? It's the rule and not the exception. 75% of all movies made before 1929 are completely gone, so it's quite the miracle that we have nearly all of Hitchcock's early work.
Spoiler rating for this post: all over the map! Low for The Ring, all out for Easy Virtue and Downhill (both of these movies are about nothing so there's nothing much to spoil), and high for The Lodger and The Pleasure Garden, but I left out plenty of stuff so that you will have some surprises if you want to see these movies.
The Ring (1927)
General plot summary and trivia
There is a mysterious video that causes death exactly seven days later to anyone who watches it.
Just kidding. This Ring is about the boxing ring and a wedding ring. "One Round" Jack is a boxer who is working at a carnival, and The Girl is the ticket taker. They're just waiting until he has more money to get married.
The waiting stops when a mysterious man shows up at the carnival and starts flirting with The Girl. He buys a ticket to get into the ring with Jack, and everyone is shocked when the fight goes into its second round, and eventually to Jack's defeat. The stranger is Bob, who is a professional boxer. Bob brings Jack into his world and Jack slowly starts working his way up the boxing ladder. Bob gives The Girl a serpent arm bangle, which she can't resist and always wears but which she (unsuccessfully) tries to hide from Jack.
Jack and The Girl get married, which does not slow down the relationship between Bob and The Girl. Jack's star continues to rise in the boxing world, bringing him closer to a big match with Bob. Who's going to win and who will The Girl end up with?
What I think of the movie
Before: Don't remember it, no opinion
After: Like it
The Ring doesn't have much of a story. It's a love triangle that gets settled in a boxing match. However, it has a look and a mood to it that makes the watch time worthwhile. The actors are terrific, and we're mesmerized by the serpent bangle.
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Plot wise, not really. Setting wise, the final boxing match takes place in Albert Hall, which features prominently in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
The adhoc tracking point that we've all been waiting for: number of times the bird is flipped: one. According to the imbd trivia page, it is the first known bird flip in a movie.
The adhoc tracking point that nobody asked for: number of time that the n-word is used: one. It's a fair guarantee with the older movies that people of color are either non existent or depicted badly, but The Ring is a little extra in that department. If you're in a tizzy about how woke everyone is nowadays, The Ring might help you get a little perspective on why.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
Carl Brisson is One Round Jack. We last saw him in The Manxman. His Hitchcock career was playing good looking guys who take their shirts off a lot and who get cheated on.
Lilian Hall-Davis is The Girl. We last saw her as the housekeeper in The Farmer's Wife. She's the kind of actor who it doesn't matter what role she's playing or anything else that happens in the movie - if she's there it's worth watching.
Ian Hunter is Bob. You don't know the name, but if you have any familiarity with old movies you know the face. He transferred over to Hollywood in the 30s and was in high demand as a supporting actor. We'll be seeing him again before this post is over.
Hello Gorden Harker as Jack's trainer/the guy who flips the bird! It was his first Hitchcock movie, so it's the last time that we'll be talking about him in this post.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Review the ad hoc tracking points.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Nope
Easy Virtue (1928)
General plot summary and trivia
The story opens in a divorce court where the hearing for Filton vs Filton on the grounds of adultery is in session. The Filtons are rich, he's divorcing her, and the press is on site and having a field day. We go through a series of flashbacks to explain how we got here. Mr. Filton is a drinker and an abuser, but those weren't grounds for divorce in England back then and Mrs. Filton was playing her expected role of the long suffering wife. She was also having her portrait painted by a cute artist, and Mr. Filton did not like the amount of time that they were spending together. The Painter was nuts about Mrs. Filton, and it's not clear how she felt about him, but he changed his will and left all of his money to her. This is relevant because there was a showdown between Mr. Filton and the artist involving a gun. The painter shot Mr. Filton, unfortunately non-fatally, and then committed suicide. Aw this is juicy stuff. That Mrs. Filton, she's a gal of easy virtue for sure! [Translation for modern times "easy virtue" = "a slut"]
The jury finds Mrs. Filton, or Larita as we are about to know her, guilty of adultery, the divorce is granted, and the press goes to town. Larita's picture is in every paper, and she needs to get out of dodge.
She goes to the French Riviera to chill. This is great because no one knows about the divorce, but bad because she's a good looking woman traveling alone and all of the fellas take notice. Rich boy John Whittaker accidentally bonks her with a tennis ball, and makes it his mission to make it up to her. He soon proposes, and she asks if maybe he just might want to know something about her, and he says so. For whatever reason they get married and go back to his family home in England.
The whole "get married to your vacation fling in France and go home to the big estate in England" works as exactly as well as it did in Rebecca, but instead of a dead wife, John has a family. About five minutes later they figure out that the random chick named Larita is the same Larita Filton that they read about in the papers, and everyone clutches their pearls. John's mother tells Larita to stay out of sight for the big society party, but Larita gets with her maid and has her take a couple of inches off the neckline of her dress so that she will make exactly the impression that Mama is afraid of. She does, Mama and Larita have a show down, John and Larita get divorced, and the press is waiting for her as she leaves the courtroom. They point their cameras at her and she says, "Go ahead and shoot. There's nothing left to kill".
What I think of the movie
Before: Hate it
After: A very low rated meh. It's a very boring and dated movie, but surprisingly I did not hate the rewatch.
Easy Virtue is certainly toward the bottom of the list of the Hitchcock cannon. It has a bit of interesting camera work, but otherwise it's dull city. I can't believe that the story was any more interesting 100 years ago. Restoration wise, the print is in the worst shape of any of the Hitchcock movies.
Does a character have Mommy Issues? Bada bing, bada boom! John's mother is something else.
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Not really, other than the quickie marriage gone wrong that was repeated in Rebecca.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
Isabel Jeans! We'll be seeing her again in this post, and we last saw her in Suspicion. She had a very long movie career, mostly as a supporting actress. She was a beautiful woman, but there is something about her blonde bob and broad shoulders that evokes Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot.
Robin Irvine is John, and we'll see him again in the same movie as Isabel.
Hello Ian Hunter as the divorce attorney! We last saw him in The Ring, and we're going to see him one more time with Isabel and Robin.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? If you want to bore them out of their minds and make them hate old movies, then go for it.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Why hello Hitch!!! It's been a while since we've seen you. He walks past Larita just before she gets beamed by the tennis ball.
Downhill (1927)
General plot summary and trivia
The movie opens in an Eton-like boys' school where Roddy is the star of the rugby team, and where all of the students seem to be 30 year old actors, but we'll let that go. We watch him win a game, and then the movie wastes no time in giving us what we want, which is to walk in on him in the locker room with his shirt off. Roddy is hot.
Roddy and Tim are roommates and best buddies, and Tim has been making time with Mabel, who works for a catering company that services the school. The three of them hang out, and Mabel does the calculation that Roddy is a much better dancer and is richer than Tim, and also sees that he's not interested in her. Roddy goes home and as the scene fades to black, Tim and Mabel kiss, and by now you've seen enough old movies to know what that means.
Some time later Mabel shows up in the dean's office. The subject is unmentionable, so the movie never tells us what is going on, but both Roddy and Tim are called in, and Mabel points at Roddy. Your guess is as good as mine, but my read is that she's pregnant and knows that Roddy's family will get her the bigger payout. Why isn't Tim stepping up? Because he's poor and going to this school is his only chance in life so I mean in that situation, duh, of course Roddy is supposed to take the blame.
Roddy is expelled from school, and his dad kicks him out. We see Roddy heading for the escalator on the underground, and watch him literally go Downhill.
What's a fella to do when he gets kicked out and cut off? Well, a good looking guy like Roddy goes to work as a stage actor. He gets into a weird love triangle thingy with the leading lady of the show who is dating the lead actor. The next logical thing happens: one of Roddy's relatives dies and leaves him a wad of money. The lead actor is cut out of the triangle and Roddy and the actress get married.
The money runs out and the actress sends Roddy packing. He again goes Downhill and moves over to France where he works as a hired dancing partner to wealthy older ladies.
[Let me get you up to date on your old movie naughties. If there is a kiss and the scene fades to black, that's sex. If someone is working as a hired dancer, that's prostitution.]
Roddy is in debt to the owner of the dance hall where he works, and the pimp coding really stands out. He gets in more debt, goes further downhill, and somehow gets back to England, where he has nowhere left to go except home. But it's the movies, so it turns out that his parents have been looking for him everywhere. They found out the truth about the Tim and Mabel situation, and all is forgiven. Roddy goes back to school like nothing ever happened.
What I think of the movie
Before: Hate it, but I adore the lead actor
After: Hate it, but I adore the lead actor
Ok, so I just described a long and rambling nonsense plot, but it's a good looking movie with hot people behaving badly and sex, so what's not to love?
Friends, you don't understand. There is not enough eye candy, bad behavior, or sex in this world to overcome the insanely slow pace of this movie. I can't stress this enough. Sloooooooooooow. Booooooooring. The issue here is that the actor who plays Roddy was a huge star, and as happened with other big stars at the time, it was considered to be enough if they stood in front of the camera. The story and everything else about the movie didn't matter.
Assuming that you may not be familiar, Ivor Novello was a Good Looking Dude who was on a massive hot streak in the 1920s. He was a gay man in a world where gay people did not exist, and somehow he able to pull off the public persona of being a heartthrob who didn't have a lady in his life because he was devoted to his mother.
Novello was so much more than his pretty face. He was a composer who wrote the WWI hit Keep the Home Fires Burning, and then wrote a ton of musicals in the 20s and 30s. The Ivor Novello award exists to this day. We haven't seen him before in our Hitchcock journey, but we heard his music in Elstree Calling.
Isabel Jeans, Robin Irvine, and Ian Hunter are here again, right before heading off to make Easy Virtue.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Only on a dare.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Nope!
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926)
General plot summary and trivia
The story opens in London with a woman screaming as she is being murdered. The police rush to the scene, where they find a piece of paper pinned to her coat, which has a triangle and the words The Avenger written in the triangle. A witness describes what she saw to a cop and a reporter, and the reporter takes the story to his paper. We see it go out and we get up to speed on what's going on. There is a serial killer called The Avenger at work. Every Tuesday he kills a blonde woman on the streets of London, and leaves the paper with the triangle on her body. The witness describes him as a tall man who had his face covered. We watch as the story hits the newspaper and the radio, and see people's reactions both of horror and of morbid interest in all of the gory details.
With the scene set, it's time to meet our main characters. Mr. and Mrs. Bunting own a lodging house, where they live with their adult daughter Daisy, who is a very beautiful blonde who works as a model. Joe is their tenant, and he is a police detective and in his spare time he is nuts about Daisy. Daisy is less in to Joe.
There is a knock at the door, and Mrs. Bunting answers. There is a tall man at the door with a scarf covering his face. Mrs. Bunting is not up to speed on the description of The Avenger, but the audience is so we know exactly what's going on. Mrs. Bunting asks the creepy dude what he wants, and it turns out that he saw the sign in her window showing a vacancy for a room.
The stranger steps inside and takes the scarf off, and we see that he's a smoking hot dude. Huh, we're all confused because Hot Dude can't be The Avenger, now can he? Mrs. Bunting shows him the room, and asks if he can pay a week in advance, and he pulls out a month's rent out of his pocket like it's nothing. As soon as she leaves him alone, he locks a medical looking bag in a drawer.
The pattern of "He does something creepy. Wait, he does something innocent and he's hot" continues. The Lodger freaks out over some portraits of blonde ladies on the wall and asks Mrs. Bunting to take them away. Mrs. Bunting brings Daisy up to help, and when The Lodger and Daisy set eyes on each other, the attraction is instant.
The Lodger and Daisy get to know each other, which Joe does not like, and then it's Tuesday again. Joe gets assigned to The Avenger case, and Mr. Bunting has a temporary gig as a waiter so the guys are out of the house. In the middle of the night The Lodger gets up and leaves as well, and Mrs. Bunting does a quick search of his room, but finds nothing except for the locked drawer. She is out of his room by the time he comes back half an hour later, and while he's out of the house, another woman is killed.
The next morning Mrs. Bunting learns about the new murder, and mentions to her husband that The Lodger was out of the house at the time. As soon as she speaks the words, both Buntings realize that something is majorly wrong. Everything about this guy screams "serial killer" and he is very into their blonde daughter. They put up their guards and try to watch Daisy.
Meanwhile Joe is hard at work, and he has made a map of The Avenger murders and sees that the locations follow a pattern and has an idea about where the next one will be. We cut to The Lodger who also has a map of the murders, but his drawing is in a triangle pattern. Up to now every time we've seen something incriminating about The Lodger there has been a counterpoint that tells us that he's not the guy, but now we don't get that release.
Another week, another Tuesday. It took him long enough, but Joe has finally figured out that The Lodger is a match for The Avenger. He shows up at the Bunting's house with his cop buddies and a search warrant. The police go into the locked drawer, and that little black bag is bursting with incriminating stuff. The Lodger has an explanation, which makes both the audience and Daisy think that he's innocent, but which makes Joe think that he's as guilty as sin. The handcuffs go on, and The Lodger makes a break for it.
Word gets out to the public who have invested their lives in following the story that The Avenger was arrested, but has escaped and is at large wearing handcuffs. The chase is on: how long can The Lodger stay out on the streets with those cuffs hidden?
Let's take a look!
What I think of the movie
Before: Love it.
After: Love it.
The Lodger is based on a 1913 novel of the same name, which was based on the Jack the Ripper plus a few other crimes at the time. In the book, the Buntings are broke and on the verge of starving when a creepy looking guy rents a room from them, saving them from financial disaster. Mrs. Bunting and Creepy Guy have a good rapport, and she is torn between thinking that he is a nice guy who is the reason why there is food on the table and knowing that he is always out of the house when murders are taking place and burning his clothes in his room afterwards. Mr. Bunting becomes separately suspicious, and the Buntings talk about what they know but they also want to keep eating and they worry that they will be blamed for harboring the killer. Creepy Guy gets wind of their suspicions and gives them a scare by taking Daisy out on the town without telling them. Mrs. Bunting finds them, Creepy Guy sees a police officer and thinks that she's ratted him out, and he runs off and is never seen or heard from again.
Anyhoo, Hitchcock was chomping at the bit to make the movie, and was gung ho to follow the book, but he also chose a Big Hot Sexxy actor to play The Lodger. The price of the beefcake was that The Lodger could not be the killer, so that part of the story had to be changed. I didn't tell you exactly what was changed, but they made a good job of it.
There are only two negative things that you can say about The Lodger. The first is actually a positive, but it can catch you off guard if you're not used to it. Hitchcock had been working in Germany, and had picked up on the German Expressionistic technique. There is a tendency for images to be exaggerated, and for the actors to make very expressive gestures - again, it's not bad, it just looks a little strange if you aren't familiar with this world.
What's the second thing? Worst movie kiss ever. If you've seen it, you cannot unsee it.
Is there a MacGuffin? YESSSSSS!!!!!! The Avenger is the MacGuffin!
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? YESSSSSS!!!!! It's the OG handcuffs movie.
Is there a Wrong Man theme? It's the OG Wrong Man!
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Big time! Just when I thought that The 39 Steps was the origin of The Wrong Man on the Run, I see that I was all wrong. Here is what we've seen since then that started with The Lodger:
Unnamed lead character: just like Rebecca!
A man is arrested for murder, and the only way to clear his name is to escape and find the killer on his own. How many movies have we seen this in? 39 Steps, Young and Innocent, Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, NxNW...
The OG handcuffs movie! Handcuffs were fun and games in The 39 Steps, but here they have a much darker and sinister feel.
Serious stair action! Staircase shots are a frequent Hitchcock theme, which I was not aware of until recently or I would have been watching for and writing a lot more about this. There is an iconic overhead shot of the Bunting's stairs in the middle of the night and The Lodger's hand moving down on the railing as he descends. There is something similar in Blackmail and Torn Curtain.
As I've said from the get-go, I see a strong connection between 1926's The Lodger and 1972's Frenzy with the serial killer theme. However, after months of doing deep dives into Hitchcock theory, I think I might be the only person on the planet that thinks this. Hey, it's my hill and my choice to die on it.
Adhoc tracking point: does the movie have implied gay or lesbian characters? Officially no, but there is a bit of word play and a few shots that are either (1) just the way people talked 100 years ago/German Expressionism or (2) Hitchcock having a little fun. I heard a story that there is a scene where Hitchcock placed a flower pot directly behind Novello's head "because he's so pretty". I don't know if that was in The Lodger or Downhill, and I will never find out because if Ivor Novello is in the shot I am not capable of looking at anything else.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
Aw Ivor Novello, we always love seeing you around here. If no one minds me saying so, The Lodger the only movie that he made that has more than his face going for it.
Malcolm Keen is Joe. We last saw him in The Manxman.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Absolutely!
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! YESSSSSS!!!!! OG cameo as the editor of the newspaper. Toward the end of the movie a man who resembles Hitchcock is seen in the crowd chasing The Lodger. and there is dispute about whether it's him or just someone who looks like him.
But wait there's more! Remember Alma Reville? If you've seen these movies, her name has been in the credits for all of the older movies as a writer or assistant director. She was Mrs. Hitchcock, and she has a cameo as well. Early in the movie we get a close up of her face as she listens to the gory details about the latest murder on the radio.
The Pleasure Garden (1925)
General plot summary and trivia
TL;DR: Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
Hang in there for another nonsensical plot description. The story opens in The Pleasure Garden, a theater in London where chorus girls dance and rich guys go to gape.
We meet chorus girl Patsy, who is purer than the driven snow and an extraordinarily nice person. Then we meet Jill, who shows up at the theater for an audition, but someone steals her letter of introduction and her money, so she's in a pickle. Patsy steps in and tells Jill to come home with her and sets up an intro to the theater manager for her the next day. Jill aces her audition and is soon the star of the show.
While Patsy is kind to a fault, we pick up that Jill is less so. Patsy's dog doesn't like Jill, and Jill is a little mean to the dog. Jill is engaged to Hugh, who is about to start a two year contract working in "the East", and Jill introduces Patsy to Hugh and his coworker Levet. Wow, if the dog doesn't like Jill he really doesn't like Levet, and neither do we, but we're not sure why yet. We just know that Hugh is a very nice guy, and he asks Patsy to keep an eye on Jill while he's away.
Jill's star continues to rise, and she starts a fling with the theater manager but won't sleep with him until he rents her a lavish apartment. She gets the apartment and then cuts Patsy off cold, leaving her a letter saying "yeah I moved out since I'm a big star now and I can't be living in cheap lodging". A prince comes calling, and Jill tells him that there will be no nooky until they get married. The prince proposes.
Meanwhile Hugh has gone back to work but Levet comes back and he and Patsy hang out. He asks her to come to Italy with him, and she says "sure, as long as you put a ring on it because I am now in love with you because of course I am since nothing in this movie makes sense anyway". He tells her that his job won't allow him to bring a wife out with him and that she won't see him for two years, but she says no problem, she'll just keep working. They get married and have their picturesque honeymoon, and then put him on the ship that will take him away to work. She keeps waving goodbye, unaware that he's lounging on a deck chair and not in the crowd at the rail of the ship, and the camera cuts to another female arm waving at the ship's destination. Yep, Levet has a sexy native girl at his work site, so he's not going to be lonely.
Patsy goes back to her old life in London, but then she gets word that Levet is ill, so she heads out to see him. She gets off the boat and walks right in on him snogging with his other gal. Levet has the jungle fever that's going around, and on top of it he's lost it. He goes ape, and screams at Patsy, who walks out on him. A coworker stops in and takes her away, and she says she's getting on the next boat to go home. The coworker asks if she wouldn't mind taking care of one of the other sick men while she's waiting, and she says sure. It turns out that the sick guy is Hugh, who has seen the headlines about Jill marrying the prince. But they can't get together because Patsy is married.
I'll skip the rest of the off chance that you would want to spend an hour watching this nonsense, but what happens next is that we go Full Hitchcock. At the end of it, Levet is not around, and Patsy and Hugh return to England to live happily ever after with Cuddles the dog.
As far as I can tell the moral of the story is that if you go the Patsy route you go through hell and eventually get Hugh, but if you go the Jill route you get to be a big star, have a nice apartment, and you get the prince. Be like Jill!
What I think of the movie
Before: Guilty pleasure!
After: Guilty pleasure!
The story makes no sense whatsoever, but there is a look, a tone, and an extra helping of the dark vibes that we know and love so well from the previous 52 movies that we've seen. As long as you go in expecting nothing, you will be delighted by the full Hitchcock touches that were in place on day one.
In all fairness, the print of The Pleasure Garden that is hanging around on YouTube is one hour long, which is way too short for a full length movie, even by 1920s standards, so we're not seeing the full story. What's out there is an edit that was put together for a shorter format, either for early TV or one of the early home movie markets. There is a longer restoration out there somewhere, but it hasn't been released on DVD or streaming. Yeah welcome to the old movie world: just because the movie still exists doesn't mean that you get to see it. Possibly the full version makes more sense, but I kind of doubt it.
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? There is a tone to the story that is perfectly in line with everything else that we've seen in the Hitchcock canon. The part that I didn't tell you about is Prime Time Hitch.
One of the opening shots is of the chorus girls making their way down a circular staircase, and there's a lot of chatter about Hitchcock's use of stairs and what it means. There's no trailer for The Pleasure Garden, but here's a peek at the stair shot:
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
John Stuart is Hugh. We last saw him in Number 17.
Miles Manders is Levet. He was briefly in Murder, and he is a familiar face in the old movie world.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? If you have a little Hitchcock fan on your hands, they might enjoy it.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Nope!
___________________
You guys, that's all he wrote!!! We're done with our Hitchcock journey.
Nah, we can't be done. How about we get back together in a couple of weeks and do some kind of a wrap up and ranking post? Yeah, let's do it! See ya then.
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