Worst Hitchcock I've Seen
(1 of 2 Found this Helpful)
April 7, 2004
I love Hitchcock, and I was willing to cut this film a lot of slack for it being such an early work, both in Hitchcock's and film-in-general's history. Even so, it was *painful* to watch. The pacing is leaden, there's precious little story, the whole "society drama" thing seems unsalvageably dated. Especially early in the film, the story is quite hard to follow. Hitchcock goes out of his way to use an absolute minimum of title cards, which theoretically sounds like a fine artistic ideal. But if you're at all like me, you'll find yourself wishing you were a lipreader, desperately trying to figure out what they're saying so you can know what's going on!
Now, there are some fine Hitchcockian touches. You'll hear much talk about the telephone operator scene, and rightly so; it is the best scene in the film. The subjective view through the judge's monocle early in the film is a nice bit of work. But there's just not enough to make it worth sitting through the long slow tedium to watch this story about basically unlikeable people who you really don't care what happens to them. Even the poor suffering heroine, I found it hard to work up much sympathy for her and her quiet suffering. You just wish she'd instead just tell all the ignorant idiots where to get off! Yes, I know, that's a modern sensibility, women didn't DO that in 1920's high society. But that doesn't make watching her meekly submit to the ridiculous moral code of the time any less ennuyeux.
But my biggest complaint has to be with the story, or lack thereof. You spend most of the film knowing that eventually her secret has to come out and wondering what will happen when it does. And the answer turns out to be: not very much.
Frankly, if this film didn't have the name "Hitchcock" in the credits, there'd be no reason to watch it at all.
Rather a bittersweet story
November 23, 2002
This is one of Hitchcock's earliest films. It is a silent film, so if you do not enjoy silent films I would give this a pass.
The movie tells the story of a "notorious" woman, blamed for her lover's suicide, and divorced, amid great scandal, by her husband.
She heads to the south of France to recover, and meets a young man, who she promptly falls in love with and marries.
Everything is fine till the return to England, where she meets the in-laws. Her mother in law takes an instant dislike to her new daughter in law. All hell breaks loose when the truth about the past comes out. The movie finishes with a second divorce, and the lead actress distraught on the court steps.
Isabel Jeans plays a sympathetic character, put upon by all around her. There are few other such characters in this movie. The mother in law is frankly unlikable. The old husband is an abusive drunk. The new husband is a weak willed wimp. By the end of the movie you feel quite sorry for Ms. Jean's character.
