It's not often that I get to view a Hitchcock film that I've not seen before, so this was something of a treat. (I do have another of his silents in my backlog, but I suspect that it will be a more pedestrian effort). This one was really super-duper. The basic story was a love triangle between two boxers and "the girl", so nothing unusual there. But it was told with such verve and experimental camera work (Hitch was very influenced by what was happening in German cinema in the twenties) that the story was incidental to the development of a personal style. I must confess that I was not previously familiar with the lead actor, one Carl Brisson, who was something of a lummox, but his rival was played by the suave Ian Hunter who had an illustrious career in Hollywood in the 30's and 40's. The version I saw ran about 110 minutes but I understand that the original video release was only 73 minutes -- it must really have been hacked about, so I'm delighted to have finally caught up with this picture in its entirety.
No comments:
Post a Comment