The film that helped make Hitchcock Hitchcock. True, he’d made thrillers before – notably The Lodger – but not exclusively so. This ushered in his first great string of masterpieces – it also saw the beginning of him being typecast. It’s still a bit creaky in parts and features one of Hitchcock’s least dynamic heroes in Leslie Banks (this is the third film I’ve seen recently with Banks which would have been better had someone other than him be cast in his role – the others were The Most Dangerous Game, Sanders of the River). Edna Best isn’t much either as his wife, although she at least has a more interesting character, a sharpshooter perhaps bored with her husband (she’s very keen to flirt with other men when they’re on holiday at the beginning). Nova Pilbeam is good, though, as their daughter who is kidnapped, and Peter Lorre is memorable as the head of the baddies – in fact, almost all the baddies are good, especially the women.
Full of terrific bits: the underlying fractures of the married couple (her flirting); the initial assassination (a comic sequence- playing a joke on the foreigner with the wool, which turns life and death); the train set; the fight at the dentist; the Sun worshippers who are agents; the fight in the meeting hall with throwing chairs (with Banks smoking as he does so); the assassination attempt at Albert Hall; the cheerful copper talking about overtime before he’s killed; another copper casually getting into shooting position before he is killed; the final shoot out (Lorre smoking too – a lot of smoking in this movie); Lorre’s expression as his female friend dies; Best coolly shooting the baddy about to kill her daughter; the final shot of emotionally devastated Pilbeam being reunited with her mother, looking like a mess.
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