1 out of 5

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

More realistically just a very slight class comedy, tracing ‘Champagne’ in director Alfred Hitchcock’s career turns it into a frustrating watch, a picture that doesn’t care much for its characters or contents and thus leaves a bit of a mess on screen, buoyed mainly by star Betty Balfour and some amusing escapades. Otherwise, this too clearly comes across as Hitch having a couple of visual ideas to execute and nothing much further; the majority of the work lacks visual zing, and I remained unconvinced that the director’s actors at this point in time got much guidance.

In Champagne, Betty (Balfour) – actually just credited as ‘The Girl,’ much like the small cast is all anonymously credited as such, maybe clueing us in to what to expect – is a flighty heiress, spending daddy’s money and meeting her playboy boyfriend (Jean Bradin) aboard a cruise, planning to marry him just to prove some something or other point to her stodgy ol’ paw. They end up getting in a fight; she flirts with a mysterious fella (Ferdinand von Alten), and then gets a visit from her dad (Gordon Harker) with some alarming news: he lost it all. Her marriage is off; her life switches over to doting over her father and looking for a job. This is broadly played as a comedy – first over Betty’s whirlwind ignorance of her actions, then somewhat as a rich girl fish-out-of-water in the working world bit – but you can try to squeeze out some commentary / thoughts on the shallowness of the rich elite. The film’s ending may support that, but also maybe not: there’s an incredibly clunky, careless structure to the whole movie that suggests the story is just a prop for, as mentioned, either a few purely visual ideas Hitchcock wanted to try out, or as a platform for Balfour to be charming, which she is. Elsewhere, the boyfriend is an awful person but I think 1920s audiences were maybe supposed to be on his side (’cause wimmin just be kwazy you know), and Harker would’ve been a familiar sight from Hitch’s previous – successful – comedy, The Farmer’s Wife, so he’s just kind of there to make stern faces, and the “mysterious fella,” who keeps reappearing, is essentially used solely to play up constantly jealousy from Bradin’s character, and the gag is forced from the start… then repeated again and again.

In short: it’s a movie about unlikeable characters, in a story that could be interesting but is told without any commitment and thus without any sense of stakes. Watched without awareness of the director, it’s simply a bad film; but slight awareness of its production, and familiarity with Hitch’s works up to this point, give it a kind of hostile-to-the-viewer undertone that makes it pretty unpleasant, only wishing for a better vehicle for Balfour.