3 out of 5

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

When visiting the early eras of cinema – and especially during transitional eras, such as the change to talkies – a “modern” POV can make it difficult to fully understand the intentions of some films. While the written word from such eras (and going back even further) are somewhat translatable, given an understanding of / appreciation for certain language conventions or cultural norms from those times. With movies, though, it’s a combination of both of those things while also watching the creators learn how to express themselves; and at the same time the creators are learning – or not – the balance of potential art and commerce.

Hitchcock was already, ahem, full of himself by 1931. He was a name; he had hits and flops; he was making cinema, and he mattered. In the movie system at the time, and during this late 20s / early 30s switch to talkies, my narrative has the director internally struggling with spinning those plates – art; commerce – and arguing for the validity of his work while also, as ever, having to alternately bow to the system or pretend like he knew how to run it. Yeah, this is all made up just from watching this stuff in sequence and mapping it to light biography reviews; I’m positive there are actual researched sources to contradict it.

But my ultimate point: it took several films at the start of the talkie era for Hitch to get the medium working. What I can’t tell from afar is if 30s-era audiences were fine just seeing a story on screen as long as it had some attractive ladies in a nightie, and maybe some passionate smooches with a leading man, and maybe a good couple laughs with racist understones, and whether or not the overall picture had a point didn’t really matter.

Er, right, maybe modern cinema isn’t that different after all. However, Rich and Strange was, reception-wise, a failure for Hitch, and it falls within this generally fallow figuring-it-out period; chronologically in his oeuvre, it represents something of a pivot point, though, and that’s kind of the only reason I’m yammering on – the movie’s interesting interplay of silent film nods and what could be seen as the more overt sex and violence represented by the forthcoming era; despite hitting the above-mentioned marks, and mostly pretty smoothly, the purposeful-or-not intentions of the movie make it pretty unsatisfying. The aforementioned language struggles – as in the language of film – means everyone at the time, Hitch included, was still learning the best way to switch from comedy to drama and back, and What If the movie was also trying to make some kind of statement befitting its titular The Tempest allusions? Yeah, it’s part of the surface-level plot as well, but a lot of Hitchcock’s Alma Reville (his wife) co-written scripts have this layer to them – reaches for something more that can’t quite make it to the screen.

Woof.

The surface: nebbish couple Fred and Em (Henry Kendall, Joan Barry) live a normal day-to-day life in London, Fred in and out to work, Em toiling over the house. It’s simple, but Em seems happy; Fred, meanwhile, searches for a life, y’know, elsewhere: something something enabled by money. It then just so happens that the couple comes in to money.

Title cards whisk us along a boat-borne journey from locale to locale. But while Emily takes to this, Fred is often seasick; she finds herself meanwhile charmed by a traveling commodore, Gordon (Percy Marmont), though remains entirely dedicated to her husband – and Gordon, to his credit, perfectly respectful. …Until Fred, recovered with his wife’s assistance, is absolutely wooed by a princess he meets along the way (Betty Amann), and hesitates like 1% to dump his wife. The journey and title cards continue as these two relationships evolve, eventually bringing things to a decisive point.

There are lots of parallels of Old and New to sift through, visually and conceptually. I don’t think the title cards were necessarily a purposeful “this is like a silent movie” contrivance, but rather another way Hitch was experimenting with onscreen communication; however, it seemed to bring out a silent flick twitch anyway, with Kendall starting the movie completely in pantomime and often doing more of the overly-articulated silent movie thing, and appearing somewhat more make-upped versus the sober and more “mature” look of Gordon. The duality swaps with Barry – who is excellent, by the way; one of Hitch’s only actors from this era who was good at more organically emoting without speaking, and could carry the dialogue as well – as her Emily generally looks a bit more plain, and reserved, versus the princess, who has the pancaked makeup look and, by dint of being “foreign,” speaks less, and in more stilted tones. There’s the whimsy of the title cards paired with their kind of frank explanation of some scenes; the way the film shifts from fish-out-of-water yokels to a relationship drama, and then within that the way Fred is the simpleton versus Em’s more layered interactions.

But I can’t tell where the line is between the art and commerce; when Hitch is just trying to do something experimental, visually, or if he and Alma were going for something more; and the film is relatively a slog because of this, with its whole mid-section a pretty unspectacular travelogue with a comedy insert (a nosey woman onboard the ship) and nothing otherwise really evolving the different relationships until the runtime demands things move forward.

For what it’s worth, I swear I’ve poked at some analyses of this movie beyond Wikipedia, and they mostly focus on what’s bubbled up there, with a few extra biographical inspirational details here and there; i.e. the lack of easily internet-found works that prattle on like the above means you know I’m mostly full of puppy poo, making up internal working for a director whose work has been infinitely pored over. But I also don’t think I’m identifying anything revolutionary, necessarily, maybe just focusing more specifically on how this film is particular in Hitch’s works of this era for how undecided he was – consciously or otherwise – on the movie’s intentions and implications.