Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/26/17

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock, 1930)

Norah Baring, uncredited actress, and Herbert Marshall in Murder!

Sir John Menier: Herbert Marshall
Diana Baring: Norah Baring
Doucie Markham: Phyllis Konstam
Ted Markham: Edward Chapman
Gordon Druce: Miles Mander
Handel Fane: Esme Percy
Ion Stewart: Donald Calthrop
Prosecutor: Esme V. Chaplin
Defense Counsel: Amy Brandon Thomas
Judge: Joynson Powell
Bennett: S.J. Warmington
Miss Mitcham: Marie Wright
Mrs. Didsome: Hannah Jones
Mrs. Grogram: Una O'Connor
Jury Foreman: R.E. Jeffrey

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Walter C. Mycroft, Alma Reville
Based on a novel and play by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson
Cinematography: Jack E. Cox
Art direction: John Mead

Hitchcock's third talkie, after the commercial success Blackmail (1929) and the comparative flop Juno and the Paycock (1930), is a solid start toward establishing his reputation as a master of the thriller, or in this case the murder-mystery subgenre. Hitchcock's direction of it is full of innovative touches: an opening sequence in which a scream is heard and the camera pans across a series of windows from which curious heads emerge; a neatly staged scene in which the investigation of the murder takes place in the wings of a theater, where people being interrogated sometimes interrupt their testimony to make their entrances; a scene that takes place in the jury room and lingers there as we overhear the sentence being delivered, with only a janitor tidying up in the actual frame; a voiceover by Herbert Marshall as we see his reflection in a mirror -- accomplished in those pre-dubbing days by playing a recording of Marshall speaking his lines. But frankly, Murder! is a bit of a mess, filled with improbable twists. For example, Marshall's character, Sir John Menier, an eminent actor-producer, winds up on the jury even though he has a prior acquaintance with the defendant, Diana Baring. And somehow, even though he believes her to be innocent, he is bullied by the other jurors into voting guilty. He then turns detective to try to overturn the verdict. The motive for the murder is equally muddled: something to do with the fact that the murderer, who turns out to be a circus trapeze artist who performs in drag, is "half-caste" -- a secret that he is willing to kill in order to protect. But this muddle has its moments, such as the one in which the dignified Sir John spends the night in a house near the murder scene, to be awakened by the landlady (the always valuable Una O'Connor) and her gaggle of noisy kids. Better, tighter scripts were to come, but Hitchcock gives this one better than it's due.