Runtime: 83 minutes
Directed by: Hitchcock
Starring: Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Betty Amann, Elsie Randolph
From: British International Pictures
Runtime: 95 long minutes
Directed by: Hitchcock
Starring: Sara Allgood, Edward Chapman, Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O'Neill, Sidney Morgan
From: British International Pictures
I saw two real old Hitchcock movies that I had never checked out before. Neither compare to all his classics, but at least the former was alright. The latter, you really don't need to see. I write about both below via Letterboxd:
This is an early Hitchcock film which for some reason is difficult to find online. Thus, borrowing a cheap DVD set from the library was required to check this out. I heard that it lived up to the “strange” part of the title and well, the people who said this were not lying.
The plot revolves around a middle class couple who get some cash from a rich uncle ahead of an expected inheritance, so they travel by ship around the world and end up in “The Orient”. The husband gets sea-sick, they see the Folies Bergere and are shocked by it, their relationship becomes frosty, and a bunch of odd random things happen... from the wife getting her ass grabbed by a weird bearded man, to a random birth on the ship that is pointless when it comes to advancing the plot. Someone drowns and again it's pointless. There are Asian junks (that's a ship; get your mind out of the gutter), exotic costumes, some of the locations in the movie they actually filmed at (Marseilles and Egypt)... to say that things are scattershot is putting it mildly.
The movie doesn't have a lot of dialogue and there are actually intertitles which explain various thoughts and ideas. It's odd but I was fine with it. I wasn't fine with the uneven pacing-it starts and stops often, and there are some dull stretches-although I was at least entertained by the weirdness. The general plot and its resolution is cliché by now; maybe back then it wasn't so obvious. At least the movie is decently shot and edited... but the husband tosses his wife angrily on the bed while arguing-he also threatens to “strangle” her and well, that does not come across as good in these modern times. Then again, the husband usually comes across as a real heel... hell, he even says something racist. For shame.
At least I can say that this oddity is average and nothing more.
Now, onto Juno:
Luckily I had heard beforehand that this is probably Hitch's worst movie, so I was not surprised by this dull and boring slog of a motion picture. Yet it is still one that I don't recommend seeing unless you must see everything that Sir Alfred did.
It was based on an old Irish play and probably is best seen on stage. Here, it is a film with no score, a whole lot of talking (and everyone has Irish accents; some may have trouble with that but most of it was intelligible to me) and only the most basic of camera moves and edits. A poor family receives an inheritance and this corrupts them. The endgame is likely what you'd expect.
An obvious issue was that Hitchcock was given this movie as a studio assignment and he couldn't do much to make it cinematic. He told Truffant that he thought the play was “excellent” but as a movie he did not know how he could make it cinematic and well, with the limitations he wasn't able to. A lot of the movie is indoors in a single room, and that was as exciting as it sounds. Honestly, I was fighting to stay awake while watching this.
It does get 1 ½ stars from me as from what I do understand the play is pretty famous in Ireland and still performed there, so I am sure it is fine... as long as you are in a theatre watching it on stage. Plus, Sara Allgood is fine as the titular Juno, the matriarch of the family. The rest of the cast, they are a mixed bag. At least as I go through more of his early catalogue in the future, I know that.
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