Product: Young & Innocent [VHS] (1938)
Rating: 4.0
Young and not so innocent Hitch
This 1937 chase demonstrates Alfred Hitchcock's genius for film language, utilising editing of images to replace expository dialogue. The man accused of a murder he did not commit and seeking help from a resistant woman is a theme Hitch would return to regularly, though the woman's eventual capitulation to the man's sexual advances is a less amusing one. Here it is given a murky Freudian association by making the woman a teenager and the man a father-figure, with her mother absent from the family. Consider the closing expression of joy on the girl's face when she has united both lover and father. This aberrant behaviour extends to the black-faces worn by an orchestra, and the twitch of the murderer, revealed in a dance-hall setpiece with a justifiably famous long crane shot leading to close-up. He even twitches as if the close-up is too close to bear. Removing the culprit from the body of the narrative is a clever idea (it's like a variation on Marion Crane in Psycho), though cynics might observe that limiting the actor's over-the-top performance to be the real reason. The images that reveal the murder are perversely beautiful, including an extraordinary close-up of seagulls in flight, which of course brings The Birds to mind. There is also a mine collapse which is almost poetic, and a Bacchanalian diner brawl. The combination of beauty and violence seems to be a very Hitchcockian thing. The film features an unusually lush romantic score and wonderfully naturalistic performances from the supporting players. When you see Hitch's cameo, as a chubby frustrated photographer, you can tell from his sense of humour how contagious his joy of movie-making would be. Of note is his direction of children, with a birthday party being particularly funny, and the heroine's dog. As the protagonists, Derrick de Marney and his accomplice Nova Pilbeam are effective, though their self-conscious underplaying seems veddy veddy British, and it's no surprise that they didn't have the same future success Hitchcock would have in Hollywood.