Young and Innocent (1938)

Actress Christine Clay and her husband are arguing in their cliff top house. The next morning, her friend Robert Tisdall finds her dead body on the beach and runs off to get help. Two girls see him running and accuse him of being the murderer. He faints during police interrogation and the chief constable's daughter Erica Burgoyne helps revive him. His lawyer is incompetent and he escapes from court. As the police go on a manhunt, he finds Erica with her broken down car.Derrick De Marney does a puppy dog face while Nova Pilbeam does a spunky young woman. There isn't any actual mystery since it starts with the suspect husband. It's questionable why she would not turn him in right away even if she believes his innocence. It depends too much on the love at first sight idea. It's too quick. It would be better if there is more to her reasoning. The couple has a little bit of fun chemistry. It works as an early rom-com action thriller. The miniatures look like children's toys and the black-face is awkward for modern audiences. This may not be a classic but is a useful watch for Hitchcock fans. It is well-made for the most part with his brand of sly humor.

a man is wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit,, and it all stems from a raincoat that he left at an establishment,, turns out a tramp got hold of the afformentioned coat,, gave it to someone,, and there you have it,, he does get some much needed help from a young woman who is insistent in his innocence and stops at nothing to prove his innocene. he takes her on a wild goose chase for part of the film, looking for clues to where he left his raincoat,, or anyone who might be able to prove his innocene. later on the two of them have to stop at her family's house for an impromptu party, where her aunt becomes very suspicious, and starts to nose around,, digging for information,, and trying to trick the poor guy with a bunch of pointless questions.. not a bad movie to watch...

Not one of Hitchcock's best films, but certainly one of his most overlooked. Despite being seemingly treated as a minor entry, Young and Innocent does show a master at work and is lots of fun as well as nail-biting. It's only let down by the presence of the black-face band towards the end which will leave a bad taste in the mouth nowadays for most, up to then Young and Innocent was actually without fault. As always with Hitchcock it is a very well-made film and has Hitchcock written all over it, that's how strongly his direction and unique touches come through. It is in Young and Innocent that has one of his most ingenious touches, which is the travelling shot to the murderer's twitching eye, chilling and audaciously shot, proving that not only was Hitchcock the unparallelled master of suspense but one of the masters of film technique too. The music is haunting, the atmosphere tense and nail-biting to the end and the dialogue snappy and not giving anything away. The story moves quickly and without a pacing lull, with many memorable scenes, the children's party scene will effectively jangle the nerves as will the scene in the mine. The climax is also suspenseful and nerve-shredding, helped partly by that travelling shot but mostly because of the atmosphere. The story also succeeds in how you care for the lead characters every single step of the way, and the acting is strong. Derrick De Marnay and Nova Pilbeam(much improved from her acting in The Man Who Knew Too Much) are likable leads, and the supporting cast don't put a foot wrong either, nobody gives one of the all-time great performances in a Hitchcock film but they didn't try to. To conclude, a great film and deserves more attention. 9/10 Bethany Cox

If you analyze the Hitchcock films of the pre-"Rebecca" days, you will notice more artistic qualities in them that not entirely disappeared as he became more commercialized in his Hollywood work. While "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes" are all considered masterpieces, others, like "Sabatoge" and "Young and Innocent", have been neglected, but in further study, are quite influential in many of the technical aspects and different ways of moving the plot forward.For "Young and Innocent", Hitchcock uses a plot line he later altered for 1956's "The Wrong Man" in which a man (Derrick De Marney here) insists he is not guilty of the crime he is accused of, in this case murder. Nova Philbeam is the innocent young woman, the daughter of the local police chief, who reluctantly gets involved in aiding him, and eventually comes to believe in his innocence. There are so many great moments here, especially De Marney's clever escape from the courtroom, the scene in a mine where a car collapses into a sink hole, and the final scene with a big band involved in wrapping up the plot line. Then, there is the shot of Hitchcock, the ham silent actor here, outside the courtroom, that is quite amusing for fans always anxious to find him in his own movies, like an early "Where's Waldo?" puzzle.This is a film of particular interest, not only because of the breathtaking photography, but because of the sly writing which keeps you glued, and the fact that the two stars are not extremely well known actors. This makes their adventures and exploits all the more suspenseful. I've always thought that the British filmmakers had a headway on new methods of the technical art in films, and were sometimes more daring than the American major studios of the time. It is seeing films like this that continue to convince me that this is true, and you can see those influences in American films later on as a "new wave" style took over the screen.