Easy Virtue (1927)

Larita Filton, embroiled in a scandalous divorce, flees to the south of France to avoid the press. There she meets and falls for the young John Whittaker. When back in England and polite society, her new in-laws are suspicious of her past.

Ranked by IMDb as Hitchcock’s fourth worst film, it is a tedious and sometimes visually confusing mess. It does not help that my copy is a poor transfer. The film was thin with very poor contrast, and the score was damaged along with it. While a fully restored edition would have been more pleasant to watch, It would not have saved the film.

This is not to say there weren’t a few creative elements. A long shot of a tennis court starts through a tennis racket then progresses to the first volley. Another scene wordlessly communicates important information by watching the reaction of a telephone operator who is listening in on the phone call. Hitchcock is experimenting in a way we see much more of later in his career.

Based on a Noel Coward play, there is a 2008 version that didn’t fare much better. Prior to this the only Coward adapted film I have seen is 1933’s Cavalcade, which was dull as dishwater. I don’t know much about Coward and theater in general, but it appears he struck the zeitgeist of his time but his works became very dated very quickly. But I’ll leave that to someone’s Theater Philistine blog to explore.

As mentioned, Easy Virtue is ranked pretty low on Hitchcock’s CV, with the bottom three coming up if I continue chronologically. We will see what happens there. But as for this one, I found the characters hard to engage with, some of the action confusing, and the story tedious. But if you must watch it, find a much better copy. AMRU 2.