OK, this goes to show how out of touch I've been in the last few weeks--I was not aware that Ferdy On Films had a blogathon going on right now to benefit film preservation--in a post TODAY--a Mother's Day post--I noticed that the vast majority of the featured blogs where writing on things Hitchcock! Wow much, much more M Day Hitch!! And...these are well considered posts, not just stream of whatever I think of as I watch films stuff, as it here. So please check it out at Ferdy On Films!
OK on to one that I have a great deal of personal affection for, since I was first shown this as a little kid by my grandfather, who both really knew the old stuff and loved it. But...talking about the need for film preservation, while on the one hand that it's great that this film, and indeed most of Hitchcock's early films, is still around--it was in SERIOUS need for some restoration TLC, reportedly French company Canal+ released a restored edition in 2005, which I have not seen. On to the film, this was really Hitchcock's attempt at the "old dark house" motif--vague mentions of ghostly footsteps, a lot of mayhem in an old, well, dark London house with a creaky old spiral staircase and A Lot of strange characters ranging from a homeless cockney squatter to a deaf-mute who is anything but. When I was a kid, what I liked about the film was it's humor. Sure it has a vague plot about diamonds that are about to be smuggled out of the country, but it's real charm is all that "upstairs, downstairs" bumbling that is going on. The lighting too is spooky and was actually a film innovation for 1932...the special effects with the toy trains and buses...and ferry were a sort of innovation, that were really just technological hold ups for Hitchcock...he had to let technology catch up with him. But still there are trains....the ever present Hitchcock trains! This is another of Hitchcock's films that is based on a play that is obviously confined to a space--Juno And The Paycock and Rope are two others.
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