Hitchcock's Birthday Bash: Guest Blogger Matthew Coniam on “How the great age ended”: Hitchcock’s “Jamaica Inn”

This guest blogging post was a little more difficult to find! Because unfortunately in the few hours that I didn't check my blog e-mail it was filled with spam! I almost simply deleted the whole lot! But, decided to make a quick check if there was anything worthwhile hidden in all the junk. I found something very worthwhile!

A guest post by Matthew Coniam of Movietone News (and various other amazing blogs!) on one of my favorite Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn. I was really overjoyed to see and read it's amazingness. Because, as I told him in my reply e-mail (it's a sad day when I start quoting myself) I have been defending this film ever since I first saw it, but not being very eloquent I usually just say, "Well, I love it, because....it's amazing!" (Not the most convincing argument, to say the least!) But, here he has written a wonderful post expressing many points I didn't know how to put into words, and others that I didn't even realize! (Unquote ;-D). He also included some shots from the film and one very cool shot of him at the actual Jamaica Inn in Cornwall! And on top of all that he created a super-cool Hitchcock questionnaire! I hope you enjoy it!




“Oh Lord, we pray three, not that wrecks should happen, but that if they do happen thou wilt guide them to the coast of Cornwall…”

These words begin Jamaica Inn (1939), Hitchcock’s historical melodrama of eighteenth century Cornwall, where it was not uncommon for gangs of men to give the Lord a little help… by luring ships to the rocks, killing the sailors and looting their cargo.

Usually dismissed when not completely ignored, Jamaica Inn is my favourite under-rated Hitchcock film. Despite its lowly status it is both historically important and couldn’t be more symbolic if it tried: the last film of his British period, and, like his first American film a year later, an adaptation of a Daphne Du Maurier novel. Thus Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, both untypical works, stand as book ends separating the two eras. Yet, while the latter is an acknowledged classic, the former remains little seen and unloved. (Incidentally, I do realise there are some Hitchcock fans who don’t much like Rebecca either, but as they are clearly insane we’ll pass over them in silence.)

My own feeling is that the British years represent Hitchcock at his most sustained creative peak. Many, many masterpieces were still to come, but the sheer unbroken consistency of these years of Rich and Strange, Young and Innocent, Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps was not to be repeated in later decades, where for every Notorious there was invariably a Spellbound or two in negative compensation.

And Jamaica Inn, for me, rounds off this most golden era in high style, yet critically its standing is of the very lowest. (The Medved Brothers even include it in their childish but shamefully compulsive book The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time.)

It seems to me that the simple fact that Hitchcock himself didn’t like it – due largely to his impatience, both to get to Hollywood and with his temperamental star – accounts for the greater part of its low standing. Certainly the other reasons most commonly offered are easily rebuffed:

The subject matter is not typical Hitchcock stuff, and there is no room in it for classical Hitchcockian touches. (But the former applies just as strongly to Rebecca, and the latter is not true.)

It was controlled more by the producer than by Hitchcock. (Ditto.)

It is in a genre we are not used to seeing Hitchcock tackle. (Get over it. Mr & Mrs Smith is near perfect, too.)

It’s melodramatic, over the top, artificial. (And? You say that like it’s a bad thing... And like Psycho isn’t…)

The latter objection usually condemns Charles Laughton’s extravagant lead performance to the same bonfire, but I’ve gone on record as saying that I’ve never seen this exquisite actor give a bad show, and I had not forgotten this film when I wrote that. His wicked squire, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (a character not in the book, where the villain is the local clergyman) is a masterly creation: a sort of anti-Scarlet Pimpernel, who hides a life of cunning villainy behind a veneer of foppish banality. It’s a broad performance but by no means a crude one, and we can never quite be sure what he is going to do or how he will respond to a given situation – note the scene in which one of his tenants comes to complain of a leaking roof and receives not the tyrannical outrage we expect but generosity and sympathy. Add to that the fact that the character, though duplicitous and wicked from the start, also goes slowly mad through the course of the narrative, a transition we see reflected in the growing unease of his devoted servant Chadwick, and it will be seen that Laughton, though clearly having fun with the character, is in no sense doing shoddy or unshaded work.

Among some truly inspired touches, Pengallan opting to illustrate his conception of beauty by bringing his horse into the dining room during a dinner party stands out as among the most bizarre, the sequence in which he lures Robert Newton’s undercover revenue man into a trap by pretending to be his ally, all the while leading him straight back into the lair of his foes, among the most chilling.

As in Vertigo and elsewhere, Hitchcock has fiddled with the structure of the original novel so that we know early on whom the villain is, wisely swapping one good surprise for acres of suspense. That’s certainly one characteristic touch. And those who like their Hitchcock films to reveal the psychological quirks of the man himself are directed towards the end scenes, when Pengallan, by this time completely insane, kidnaps Mary and attempts to flee the country with her, applying loving and plainly fetishistic attention to the task of binding her wrists and gagging her with a silk handkerchief.

The finale, too, is a stunner, with Pengallan climbing to the top of the ship’s crow’s nest to avoid capture and then shouting to the crowd below before plunging to his death:

“What are you all waiting for? A spectacle? You shall have it – and tell your children how the great age ended! Make way for Pengallan!”

^Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks and Emlyn Williams

The wreckers themselves are an impressively gruesome bunch, headed by that fine actor Leslie Banks as Joss (formerly on the side of the angels as the anguished father in The Man Who Knew Too Much), and actor-author Emlyn Williams as Harry, the most sadistic of the gang. Odd, perhaps, to find Robert Newton, relatively restrained but with eyes already bulging, as the heroic Jem – those especially familiar with his work in Disney’s Treasure Island will feel especially short-changed by the casting – but Maureen O’Hara in her debut (she was Laughton’s protégée; at one point he attempted to adopt her) is beautiful and assured.


^Maureen O'Hara

Of course it helps if you love Cornwall, and its folkloric store of wreckers and smugglers, and here, though here only, I will admit to personal bias: I’m a sucker for pretty much anything set in Cornwall, and have visited the ‘real’ Jamaica Inn, that first inspired Du Maurier to write the story, virtually every year since earliest childhood (watching it get less and less atmospheric and more and more tourist-obsessed every time).

^Matthew at the real Jamaica Inn!

But there’s much more to the film than a colourful subject. The photography, sets, art direction and miniatures are wonderfully atmospheric, as is the score by Eric Fenby, (better known as the young composer, celebrated in Ken Russell’s Song of Summer, who was employed by Delius to set down the unfinished scores the blind and paralysed composer was able only to dictate). It’s one of many finishing touches contributing to the overall excellence of a fine film – and a fine Hitchcock film.

While we’re here, anyone fancy a Hitchcock mini-questionnaire?

1. What are your five favourite Hitchcock films?

2. And your three least favourite?

3. The three most under-rated…

4. … and the three most over-rated?

5. The three you’d show to someone who had never seen a Hitchcock film before?

6. Your favourite villain…

7. Your favourite hero …

8. Your favourite blonde …

9 … and your favourite score?

10. Finally, what is your single favourite scene from any Hitchcock film?

Watch Jamaica Inn at Internet Archive

Thank you ever so, Matthew for this wonderful post! I can see you put some time into it, and I really, really appreciate it!

Everyone else: I'm going to be gone camping until Sunday!!! While, I'm gone you can still send me Hitchcock posts and I will post them right after I get back!! And, Matthew...I am so going to do that Hitchcock questionnaire after I get back!!!

Hitchcock's Birthday Bash: Guest Blogger Amanda Cooper on "Secret Agent"

Once again, I was so happy to see an e-mail in my in-box about Hitchcock! This time it came from the fantastic Amanda Cooper of A Noodle In A Haystack and Public Jitterbug #1. And I was furthermore excited to see that she had written about one of my top five British period Hitchcock's: Secret Agent. Her review is knowledgeable, enjoyable, and pretty darn thorough!

Here it is, the second real review my poor blog as ever seen: Amanda's take on Secret Agent





I sat down this evening to watch a movie directed by the ingenious Alfred Hitchcock. Out of twenty movies on four discs (respectively), only one disc would play on my computer. Luckily for me, this was the disc containing Secret Agent (1936).

The first thing that really pulled me in about this movie was (rather disturbingly) the morbid excitement that I experienced when the one-armed man used one of the candles that stood sentry about our hero's casket to light his cigarette. As for the story, I expected it to go back in time and show us how Brodie (John Gielgud), a British officer, met his demise. I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued, however, to learn that he wasn't dead at all. He had just returned to England and been given a mission: find a certain German spy and prevent said spy from completing his mission. Brodie, who has now been renamed Richard Ashenden, travels to the Hotel Excelsior in Switzerland, where the spy is stopping before moving on to Constantinople.

Once at the hotel, Ashenden discovers that he has been "assigned" a wife, Elsa (Madeleine Carroll), who is being chased by the flirtatious Mr. Marvin (Robert Young). Also pursuing Elsa, with a little more creepiness and much less charm, is a man known as the General (Peter Lorre), who is also Ashenden's assistant.

As always, Hitchcock directed with mastery and produced a film that is a fascinating portrait of four people during World War I. Two who begin to question their mission when an innocent man is killed because of them; a third who kills not only because he believes he must, but also because he takes great satisfaction from his role as assassin, and a fourth who hides his true identity behind a mask of playfulness. Each character, even the awful General and Marvin, gained a certain measure of sympathy from me as I watched, through a spellbound mist, while the plot progressed and they were all changed, or (in the case of the General) tragically unchanged, by their experiences.

Notes on the characters:

Richard Ashenden was perhaps a little too noble, which makes him all the more wonderful. After plotting with the General to kill the man they believe to be the spy, Ashenden's conscience doesn't just prick him: it stabs. The General will not be stopped, however, and kills the suspect despite Ashenden's protests. Later, they learn that Ashenden was right, and the wrong man was murdered. After receiving this news, Ashenden decides to resign: he wants nothing more to do with spying and assassinations, but when new information comes about the identity of the real German agent, Ashenden can't leave. He truly believes that he must do all that he can to prevent more lives from being lost: even though it means he will have to commit murder, but when his chance comes, he is unable to carry out his mission. He can't bring himself to kill an already dying man.

The General was insane. I knew this with certainty by the second time he appeared in the story. He was sinisterly overzealous in his duties, but I still couldn't help but feel sorry for this man. Nothing was ever said of his past, but this is what I think: he had been killing for so long, that his conscience and sense of morality (which I believe he must have had at some point) left him completely, destroying his sanity, as well. I think that my theory is proved by the General's reaction to the news that he has killed a harmless old man instead of a cold-blooded spy. He laughed, shrilly and almost hysterically. In spite of my sympathy for him, however, I find that I'm glad he didn't survive the climax. The world feels safer without him.

Elsa Carrington began her mission as a perky young woman who wanted excitement, but by the end of the film she was a more mature woman who only wanted to be safely away from the perils of war and espionage, in company, of course, with her beloved Ashenden. The scene when she comes to fully understand what Ashenden and the General have been sent to do is nothing short of heartbreaking. I don't even want to write about it, so if you want to know what happened, you'd better watch the movie. Suffice it to say that Hitchcock directed this scene in the terrifyingly exquisite way that only he could.

Robert Marvin first appeared to be a simple flirt of no real consequence, but as the story unfolded, his character took on a more important, and gradually darker role. His disguise was charming and he easily fooled the other characters. During one scene (just moments before the heartbreak I spoke of while discussing Elsa's turning point) he pretends, quite convincingly that he cannot speak German with anything akin to fluency. This, we later learn, is obviously untrue because he is a native German and the very man that Ashenden and the General having been trying to stop. One of the things that I enjoy so much about Marvin is his interest in Elsa. He truly seemed to care about her, as evidenced by the fact that when common sense must have told him to shoot her, he didn't. He put away his gun and tried to believe her when she said that she loved him. Why did he try to convince himself that she wasn't lying? Because he wanted, and maybe even needed, to believe.



Watch Secret Agent on Hulu

Thank you so much, Amanda I was really fascinated as I read!

Everyone else: guest bloggers are some of my favorite people in the world, so if you want to be able to say that you're one of my favorite people in the world...this is the easiest way! Hahaha...

Want more? Read DKoren's previous post in the series!

Photo of the Day!

An actress Hitchcock loved to work with:


Ingrid Bergman!

Of course he never did quite forgive her after she deserted his movies for Rossellini's...;-D

Hitchcock's Birthday Bash: Guest Blogger DKoren on "Malice Domestic"

As you may know, I have declared the month of August to be Hitchcock's Birthday Bash. To help me celebrate I have called out to all movie bloggers to write guest posts for my blog about anything Alfred Hitchcock.

My first guest post comes from the amazing DKoren of Sidewalk Crossings. I was really delighted when I saw this in my e-mail inbox. It's original, extremely well-written, and just all-around entertaining! She decided to write a review (the first real review my poor, little blog has ever seen) on a favorite episode of the television series: Alfred Hitchcock's Presents.
Here are DKoren's thoughts on Malice Domestic:


I've always loved Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962), especially the
half-hour eps. They're the perfect length to provide plenty of
entertainment but not take up the whole evening. The opener and closers
with Alfred Hitchcock himself introducing the episode are often quite
wacky, macabre, and sometimes, they're better than the actual episode.
He tends to mock the sponsors quite a bit, wonder how he got away with
that? Just by being Hitch? LOL! There should be a DVD of just his
bookends, only his wrap-up usually gives away the ep's twist, so I
suppose that wouldn't work without spoiling many episodes. There's a
prime example with an ep called "The Crystal Trench." The episode is
okay, but not fabulous. The bookends, particularly the closing one,
make me laugh out loud.

This series tends to suck me right in. They're usually well-written,
usually have a twist or two, and usually star more than one well-known
actor from the era. One of my most-watched episodes features one of my
favorite actors, Ralph Meeker. He's probably most famous for staring as
Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, and as the ill-fated Corporal Paris in
Paths of Glory, though when I throw his name out, even among fans of old
movies, I often get blank looks. I find him a thoroughly intriguing
actor: good-looking, sexy, smirky, subtle, shifty, and smart. He's
scarily good at playing characters who are simultaneously sincere and
yet untrustworthy, and that makes him the perfect guest star in a show
like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where nothing is ever quite what it
seems.

He guest starred in four episodes and has the distinction of being in
the premiere episode "Revenge." My personal favorite of his four
outings is "Malice Domestic." It's both a well-written ep, and also the
kind of episode that lets Ralph do what he does best. I know I'm a bit
biased, but I never tire of watching this ep.

There's a lot of threads woven into the tapestry of this ep. It's one
of the reasons this is one of my favorites. It's robust, packs a lot of
set up and motives into a short time. A look, a few words... these
suffice to supply the viewer with reams of background on the characters.
Ralph plays Carl, a writer stalled out on his book. His wife, Annette
(played perfectly by Phyllis Thaxter), rides him about it. She's
successful making pottery not having any trouble producing beautiful
pieces -- and distracting him from his book to have him look at what
she's made. They've just adopted a lovely Great Dane named Cassandra,
who Carl loves but Annette doesn't. Carl is a rather cheerful fellow,
his wife is a bit cold and inscrutable. She also has a minor thing
going on with another man. The tension between this married couple is
palpable, and yet they also have their tender, affectionate moments, and
it makes them real to me. There's also a doctor who takes care of Carl
when he starts suffering from terrible stomach pains, and who, after
seeing the wife out with the other man, discovers Carl is afflicted by
more than a mere virus or nervous stomach, that his problems are
actually caused by a bit of arsenic lacing his food...

I won't spoil the ending, but it's satisfying. My favorite scene is
where the doctor has just informed Carl he's been poisoned, and right
when Carl finds a container of arsenic among his wife's pottery supplies
-- she brings him a big tall glass of orange juice with a big smile on
her face. I just love his reaction. "Malice Domestic" is just one of
many entertaining episodes produced during the run of this series.

Watch Malice Domestic on Hulu

Thanks again, DKoren for this fabulous post!

And everyone else: I still want guest bloggers! Please don't feel intimidated by DKoren's amazingness! I would love anything and everything (and believe me my little blog welcomes the chance to see better writing than I've been giving it...and anything is better writing! ;-D)

Photo of the Day!

Gene Tierney looking amazing as always!

Bobby and Judy sing a Medley!

I love this video and I thought I would share it!

Bobby Darin singing a medley with Judy Garland:

Photo of the Day!

Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone discussing costumes...

P.S. I can't recall where I found this one (it was several months ago)...so if I stole off your blog...terribly sorry!