Let me start by saying that we didn’t actually deliberately rent this. Rather, we inherited a box with four VHS tapes of Hitchcock classics, three of which I had never heard of. The fourth was indeed a classic, so we watched that. I should have been suspicious at the distinct snapping sound I heard when the movie was out of its box – the marketing trap had sprung.
As it turns out, this is the movie that was done too often. This movie, apparently later labeled by Hitchcock himself as “made by a talented amateur”, may have secured Hitchcocks career and enabled him to redo it 22 years later, but it looks and feels like a talented amateur made it. The script is jumpy and incoherent, the direction nonexistent for large stretches, and the acting ludicrous for the most part. There are, however, a few saving graces: the sequence leading up to the nonfatal shot in Royal Albert Hall betrays the fledgling master, Peter Lorre is fascinating to watch, and movie history buffs will like the clash of silent expressionist techniques and modern talkie plot, left obvious, because some talented amateur was unable to resolve it.
Something to say?