Produced directly after the success of The Lodger, Alfred Hitchcock returned to his star, Ivor Novello. Unfortunately, Downhill wasn’t nearly as successful, and it shouldn’t come as surprise. All the mystery and intrigue of the previous film was replaced with “bad stuff happens to good guy”. No mystery, no suspense.
Metadata on IMDb implies gay coding with the Roddy character, but I don't see it. Novello himself was openly gay, but I sense this is commentary on Roddy not responding to Mabel's advances. I don't see that interpretation anywhere else.
Novello is an interesting character. A bona fide matinee idol at the time, the 35ish Novello believably played a high school boy. Ah, what acting talent, pancake makeup, and grainy film stock can do. He co-wrote the play on which the film is based, along with many other plays and songs. His film career would be fairly brief, but would continue to write. The Ivor Novello Awards are still presented for songwriting and composing.
Hitch wasn’t quite Hitch, not just yet. He played with elements of visual style uncommon of the day (some of which he would later criticize) but the film is a bit of a snoozer. Not a painful watch, but not a very compelling one either. AMRU 2.5.
No comments:
Post a Comment