3 out of 5

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

If you’re experiencing Hitchcock’s films chronologically, The Ring – his fourth, but third available as of this writing – is where it works more contextually than as a standalone movie. The Pleasure Garden has to be squinted at to be viewed as part of the filmmaker’s works, but functions as a pretty menacing, fast-moving romantic drama. The Lodger leans hard into stylization that is visible in Hitch’s oeuvre, but even without that legacy it’s visually striking. The Ring, by contrast, is a very standard romance, and it’s a bit of a slog: it moves very slowly, even by plotting standards of the 20s. It spells out its focus of a love triangle within its first few minutes – including where everyone falls in that triangle; positions do not change – and then draws that out for an hour and a half.

But contextually, within Hitchcock’s just-getting-started career, and as compared to the look and feel of movies of the time, it is a quite a leap forward: experimenting with first-person; with special effects; and with using framing exclusively to make an impact shot (as opposed to the Gothic angles and hefty shadows of The Lodger), Hitch achieves his most narratively smooth movie up to that point. The skill in construction is evident, even outside of knowledge of the director: while the overall story is rather staid, we don’t have the struggle between text cards and emoting and timing of the prior films: every scene feels like it has a point for existing, and the actors communicate almost entirely without the need for text. The humor translates; the flippancy and violence of the various passions come across – whether through conversation, or the aggression in the boxing sequences – and the movie flows from moment to moment with only a couple of hard cuts. It is a polished movie, but also carefully (and playfully) experimental, allowing it to achieve a bevy of tones and scope with only a few actors and a fairly small scale.

Our leads are all pretty engaging this time out, it’s just a shame the story itself is so thin that the drama instead comes across as pretty silly. But, again, put into context for the time and the director’s career, it’s an impressive production.

In The Ring, carny boxer Jack’s (Carl Brisson) marriage to carny ticket-taker Mabel is interrupted by the magnanimous presence of pro boxer Bob (Ian Hunter). While Jack starts boxing on the professional circuit to win Mabel’s attentions, she is continually wooed away by Bob, leading to an eventual showdown – in the ring – between the two boxers.