She (1935)

Merian C. Cooper, the man behind King Kong, produced this campy adventure yarn about a female ruler in a Lost Kingdom for RKO Radio Pictures in 1935. Helen Gahagan Douglas portrays She/Ayesha, who "must be obeyed." The story is from a series of novels written by H. Rider Haggard that were popular in the very late 19th century.

Randolph Scott, Cary Grant's "roommate" and future western star, is the male lead and Helen Mack plays a young woman vying for his heart with She. Unfortunately, for She, she takes one too many flame baths and her eternal youthfulness doesn't last: she becomes a hag and dies. Spielberg must have watched this movie, along with other Cooper productions, because there are many similarities between She and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Also, She's quest for eternal youth reminded me of the outrageous Death Becomes Her. So someone involved with that movie watched this too because Meryl and Goldie look like She at the end of She.

Gahagan Douglas later became a Democratic Representative for California in 1940's. She was her only movie part. Before Douglas had been a Broadway actress and married Melvyn Douglas whom she met while performing in a play. In 1950, Richard M. Nixon took her seat in a tough campaign in which he accused her of being a Pinko/Communist. His smear campaign effectively put an end to her political career; this was during the witch hunt days. Because of his smear tactics Douglas was the first to call the future U.S. President "tricky Dick."

The behind the camera team is first rate. The art director/production design is by Van Nest Polglase who did all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals and other major RKO productions during this period. She's court does look like it was before or later used for a musical.

There were two versions of She before this version and a later one in 1965 with Ursula Andress.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Blackmail (1929)

Hitchcock scored a triumph with his gripping talking picture debut in 1929. Adapted by Charles Bennett from his own play, Blackmail had been performed on the stage by Tallulah Bankhead, who was a London stage actress at the time. The female character in the picture kills a suitor of hers who tried to rape her; but, is it self defense or murder? Should she have gone to the gentlemen's flat by herself after only just meeting him? Was he expecting a tryst? Should she have expected that? These are not easy questions to answer while watching Blackmail. The characters in Blackmail are not black and white and there is no happy ending for any of the principal performers. While all of his movies up to this were well made and enjoyable, this is the first Hitchcock thriller since The Lodger, and it is much more darker about humanity.

Hitchcock opens the movie with the police working the beat: arresting and booking a criminal. Once the female character, played by Anny Ondra, commits murder she stumbles around the streets of 1929 London shocked and disoriented. Will she be taken in like the criminal in the opening scenes? Is that  why Hitchock showed us the policeman's routine? There's a catch: the murderess also has a detective boyfriend. And, of course, he is assigned to the case of the murdered suitor, who was an artist. Will he turn Anny Ondra in? Finally, someone else knows Ondra was at the scene of the crime, hence the movie's title, Blackmail.

Hitchcock shot Blackmail as a silent except for the last reel. He was encouraged to make it all sound, but he wanted the film to be shown in cinemas that weren't equipped for sound technology which were a good bit as this was the early years of talking movies. Eventually, he reshot scenes with sound, but, unfortunately, his leading lady, Anny Ondra, who appeared in Hitchcock's The Manxman, was Czech and not fluent in the English language. Her line readings were provided by actress Joan Barry who read the lines off camera into a microphone while Ondra mouthed the words. It's not as awkward onscreen as one would think, but Barry's voice doesn't exactly fit Ondra. Barry would later work with Hitchcock again on Rich and Strange.

Anny Ondra has the distinction of being played by Britt Ekland in a 1978 telefilm, Ring of Passion. Besides being an actress Ondra was married to boxer Max Schemling who fought Joe Louis in a 1938 boxing match that was labeled "the most important sporting event in history." It was on the eve of WWII and the match become symbolic in terms of race and history. It became sociopolitical. Joe Louis won. A black man beating a white man, German one, in 1938. However, Schemling wasn't political and didn't consider himself a Nazi, and though he was in the German army, after the war he was cleared of any Nazism.

Cyril Ritchard, who plays the horny suitor was known for appearing in musical comedies and had a  distinguished stage career spanning England, America, and Australia. He appeared most famously alongside Mary Martin in Peter Pan in which he played Captain Hook. He won a Tony for the role.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Downhill (1927)

Retitled When Boys Leave Home upon release in the U.S., Downhill was the second and last teaming of star Ivor Novello and director Alfred Hitchcock. Credited with a nom de plume, Ivor Novello co-wrote the script with actress Constance Collier; she would later appear in Hitchcock's Rope in 1948. It's a misogynistic tale of a wealthy young man led by unscrupulous women to his downfall, hence the title. First he is kicked out of school because a young tart accuses him of either raping or impregnating her; second a young actress he works with on the stage takes him to the cleaner; lastly, a predatory older woman uses him as a gigolo.

Star Novello is ravishing to look at - so handsome! He is shown with his shirt off in one scene! He was gay in real life! Best known for writing and acting  in musicals on the London stage, he penned the WWI classic "Keep the Home Fires Burning", and "hung" out with Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier. His film career lasted until the mid-1930's and he passed away at age fifty-eight in 1951; coronary thrombosis.

The gold-digging stage actress is played with vivaciousness by a Carey Mulliganesque Isabel Jeans. Hitchcock was evidently impressed with her for they worked together after Downhill on Easy Virtue. She appeared in Suspicion fifteen years later in a supporting role.

Along with the performances, Hitchcock's inventive camera work raises Downhill above the mediocre level. The last reel features an effective hallucination scene with characters fading in-and-out of focus from the POV of Novello's character.

The movie can be streamed here via Internet Archive.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Champagne (1928)

Socialite party-girl Betty Balfour gets her comeuppance in this light comedy from Hitchcock; one of his rare out-and-out comedies. The Roaring 1920's atmosphere is the main attraction here and there's plenty of champagne corks popping and flappers kickin' up their heels. The leading lady's airplane entrance into the movie is a hoot and so flamboyant!

Hitchcock and his crew spend most of their creativity on technical feats such as the opening with a champagne bottle bursting open. According to biographer Patrick McGilligan, a lens was attached to a large bottle of champagne, so one could see from the bottom to the opening what was going on on the other side of the room as the champagne burst out. It is one of Hitchcock's most celebrated effects.

While he toyed with technical innovations, the actual story of the movie bored him, and he was not happy on the set. However, during filming he did meet and befriend a young still photographer named Michael Powell - the future director of The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom.

Hitchcock would later tell Francois Truffaut in their famous published interviews in the late sixties that Champagne "was probably the lowest ebb in my output."

You can read more about leading lady Betty Balfour here.

Champagne is included in a collection of 20 early Hitchcock titles released by Mill Creek Entertainment that I own.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The Manxman (1929)

The Manxman would be Alfred Hitchcock's last silent picture, although at the time he didn't realize his next planned project would have to be converted to sound. Shot in Cornwall, standing in for the Isle of Man, Hitchcock continues his use of ordinary people, the proletariat working class, as characters for his early movies. Beautifully photographed, it's a basic love story turned sour, but the visual trickery and expertly staged scenes elevates the material into a movie some consider his finest silent picture.

The leads are played by actors Hitchcock works with again or will in the future: Carl Brisson, Anny Ondra and Malcolm Keen. Ondra and Brisson were Polish and Danish, respectfully, acting in an English movie. This occurred frequently because one of the advantages of silent movies was their universality: no language barriers.

Two exquisitely shot scenes stand out: Anny looking out over a bluff at Keen standing on the beach in front of the waves; she runs gaily, gaily down to meet him only to learn bad news when she gets there. Second shot is a master with Anny and Keen standing in front looking glum contrasted with Brisson's joyousness behind them. One does not need dialogue to know what's going on. The images tell the story and let's the audience see rather than hear the characters' emotions.

Hitchcock and the distributor were not happy with The Manxman and dismissed it. Yet - according to screenonline.co.uk, the picture was a commercial success.

The movie is adaptation of a novel by Victorian-Edwardian novelist Hall Caine who often wrote love triangle melodramas set on the Isle of Man. Though popular in his day he is forgotten like fellow Brit Somerset Maugham.

Also noteworthy: The court scene where Anny Ondra is covered in a black blanket against her blonde locks facing the judge, her former lover, noble and suffering like Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.

"The Manxman" is included in a DVD package I own with 20 of Hitchcock's early British movies.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The Lodger (1927)

Film-making in England in the nineteen-twenties was a distant third in terms of craftsmanship in the world; behind the U.S. and Germany and, yes,Sweden. Alfred Hitchcock's artistry lent the fledgling Brit movie business luster and cred and he made his first true suspense thriller as a director with this acclaimed silent produced in 1926. The suspense in this movie comes from what is implied rather than shown. The audience never sees the actual murderer just the calling cards he places on his victims. Ultimately The Lodger  is about mistaken identity. Not murder. The Jack the Ripper murderer never shown is just Hitchcock's McGuffin: a plot point to move the story along.

With silent pictures the directors had to tell a story with images and that's why silent movies are so much more expressive and poetic than talking movies. That poetry was lost when sound came in 1927 with The Jazz Singer; the exact year this movie was released. Not surprisingly visuals are amazing in this movie; it opens with a murder, not shown but implied by a woman screaming, then a montage of police, spectators, print presses running, and then newsboys screaming the headlines. All expertly edited by Ivor Montagu. The technical tricks are what give the move weight; alas, this story has been done innumerable times.

And, of course, being a Hitchcock movie it's all about the women. Hitchcock agreed with Sardou that the women in their work "should suffer." In this particular movie the leading lady, June, doesn't suffer much, but she does have her own title cards and any scene she's in the camera highlights her; it's like there's a halo around her. June's costumes: the b&w ensemble at the end ensures she sticks out among st the brown and grays the other characters are wearing during the lynching scene. Evidence that Hitchcock wanted all eyes on   her character whenever she's in a scene.

 Hitchcock made June wear a blonde wig for the shoot, so his obsession with blondes was there in the beginning. He favored the fair-haired women as his work from here on out details; it wasn't something he developed over time, even though he wasn't always allowed to use these hair color types he desired. Even the murderer in the movie prefers fair haired curly-haired females.

Billed just as June, the actress June Howard-Tripp was mainly a performer in light musical comedies and revues on the stage. She only made a handful of movies; the best known of which is The Lodger. A picture of her becoming a U.S. citizen can be seen here.

The charismatic leading man, songwriter/performer Ivor Novello, was gay in real life. Originally, Hitchcock wanted the character of the Lodger  to be more sinister, leading the audience to suspect that he actually was the murderer, but the studio producing the movie, Gainsborough Pictures, were worried that Novello's huge female fan base would be upset. Famously, Novello is introduced in the picture by having his shadow shown on the door of the boarding house as he approaches. In a master shot, the lady of the house opens the door and he is shown, eerily, shrouded in shadow and fog. It's the best shot in the movie.

Novello starred in a remake of The Lodger in 1932.

Also noteworthy: the mob scene at the end when Novello, hanging by a pair handcuffs, becomes entangled on an iron fence while women and men beat him. And I love the loose, frilly twenties dresses June wears.

"The Lodger" is included in a DVD package I own with 20 of Hitchcock's early British movies. 

Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most successful movie directors in terms of quality and longevity. I'm going to try and watch every movie he directed! Not sure when I will finish! But will blog with my thoughts and some background info on each movie as I watch them.

Hitchcock directed his first movie in 1925 and his last in 1975. A fifty-year movie veteran. He is up there with Spielberg in terms of being a household name, even thirty-three years after his death. Everyone has heard of Psycho whether they've actually seen it or not.