Jeremy Arnold’s useful commentary makes the point that Eric Fenby’s music (the only film work by this composer associated with Frederick Delius) is heard only at the beginning and the very end, but otherwise the film has no score and we never miss it. To belabor this obvious point, presentation matters in being able to see (and hear) a movie properly, and many a worthwhile film has been obscured by a bad print. This restoration played at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Festival, where quite a few viewers must have been pleasantly surprised. The film’s bad rap has been aided by having fallen into the public domain, where it has circulated for decades in prints so lousy that this sparkling new version is a physical revelation at least. The director’s fans have tended to dismiss efforts that don’t fall into his standard suspense mode (the criminally overlooked Under Capricorn, for example), although one can see many affinities and foreshadowings of other Hitchcock projects here. In this case, the film’s original critical and popular success has been forgotten. Hitchcock himself disparaged the film, although he typically considered all his hits “successful” while his flops were “mistakes”. He later adapted one more du Maurier story, The Birds. It couldn’t have helped his ego that Laughton’s instincts proved sound at the box office, but Hitch and du Maurier got their own back with the great success of Hitchcock’s next film, Rebecca. Hitchcock felt like a hired hand forced to accept the creative decisions of others, and this didn’t endear the project to him. Other changes were mandated by Laughton, who co-produced with Erich Pommer. The alterations were partly necessitated when Paramount said they would refuse to distribute an English movie in the USA if it violated the Production Code by having a clergyman as the villain (as in the book). The film differs in many respects from Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 novel, and that’s why she didn’t like it. Laughton’s overripe villainy is splendid and riveting (as usual), and the supporting cast rocks as well, including Emlyn Williams as a particularly vicious cut-throat in would-be natty togs, Horace Hodges as the long-suffering butler, Basil Radford as his patented old-school nitwit, Aubrey Mather as the spooked coachman, and, as the wrecking crew, Wylie Watson, Mervyn Johns, Morland Graham, Edwin Greenwood, and baby-faced Stephen Haggard. The film functions as a series of more or less spectacular setpieces, shot by two great photographers (Bernard Knowles and Harry Stradling) amidst Tom Morahan’s beautiful sets, and edited by future director Robert Hamer according to Hitchcock’s typical precision. When Mary rescues a gang member (Robert Newton) from being hanged, they seek help from the local squire, Sir Humphrey Pengallan ( Charles Laughton), but they don’t know what the viewer knows: Sir Humphrey is the head villain. With great presence of mind and not a little temper, Mary falls among a gang of murderous shipwreckers on the Cornish coast of 1819 when she goes to stay with her put-upon Aunt Patience (Marie Ney) and rascally Uncle Joss (Leslie Banks). O’Hara would embody this persona for the rest of her career. The film gives a star introduction to Maureen O’Hara (after a couple of minor screen roles) as its young Irish heroine Mary, archetypally beautiful and spunky. Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn isn’t an overlooked masterpiece, but it has been widely and unfairly dismissed for decades for complicated reasons.
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