Downhill (1928)

This was Hitchcock's fourth film, after his first hit, THE LODGER, and with the same leading man, Ivor Novello. The latter was a very effective silent film actor, romantic and dashing (he resembled the young Fredric March). He takes direction well from Hitchcock, playing a man whose reckless "honor" sets him on the downward spiral of a vagabond existence.Hitchcock plays with camera angles and editing techniques that were innovative for the time. The use of the hand-held camera to denote visual unsteadiness, the montage of disturbing images to denote delirium, and a generous use of close-ups. It's the style here of a true artiste that is most impressive.Novello made 16 silents, two of which are lost. He proved himself quite a bad sound actor and only made six talkies. Film's loss was the theater's gain as he composed the music for and rote the librettos for 8 grand London operetta extravaganzas between 1939 and 1952, making a greater name for himself than his acting would have provided.This is one of Hitchcock's most impressive early films. The genius was there from the start.

Classmates and close friends at an English public school, Roddy Berwick and Tim Wakely compete for the affections of a local shop girl. When the girl falsely accuses Roddy of getting her pregnant, he is expelled. However, Roddy remains silent to protect Tim, who was the guilty party, and the friends make a pact to keep silent. Outraged at his expulsion, Roddy's father does not believe his son's claims of innocence and throws him out. Thus, Roddy strikes out on his own, and his life begins a downward spiral from stage acting to a disastrous marriage to taxi dancing to the Marseilles waterfront. "When Boys Leave," also known as "Downhill," was Alfred Hitchcock's fifth completed film, and, early on in his career, the master director explores his oft-repeated theme of the wrongfully accused.Shot in 1927, the film is silent with inter-titles, and the black-and-white cinematography is often well lit with striking visual compositions. However, Hitchcock generally holds the camera steady, and movement occurs within the frame. The film lacks the camera fluidity common among movies of the late silent era, although Hitchcock is already a master of visual story-telling, and the inter-titles are brief and sparse. As Roddy's life reels out of control, he is dwarfed by his surroundings in rooms with impossibly high ceilings and doors that are more than twice his height. Fortunately, Hitchcock elicits naturalistic performances from his cast, and none indulges in the grand style of acting that negatively stereotyped silent movies. Ivor Novello, a Welsh matinée idol best known for his musical talents, plays the suffering Roddy quite well. Isabel Jeans as Julia Fotheringale, a spendthrift actress, and Ian Hunter as Archie, Julia's shady lover, provide amusing support during one colorful episode in Roddy's descent."When Boys Leave" is from Hitchcock's apprentice period in England, when he was still learning the craft. While the story is thin, and the motivations vague, this short silent film shows flashes of the genius to come, and, for students of the master, every Hitchcock film is worthwhile viewing.

It is time to set some limits to the cult of the director. A bad film by a good director is still a bad film.Hitchcock was a good director and Downhill was a bad film.The problem is not what Hitchcock does with the material but the material itself. The story is not only dated and melodramatic, it is incoherent. It charts the downward spiral of promising public schoolboy, Roddy Berwick, after he is expelled from school for taking the blame for a friend's offence. However, his subsequent descent is not a consequence of this initial misfortune. At each stage it is precipitated by something completely different and the only common factor is Roddy's own feebleness.After expulsion from school he rows with his father and stalks out of his home, so the second step in his decline is due to his pride and pigheadedness.He finds work as an actor and seems to be doing OK. Then, in a ridiculous plot development, he inherits £30,000 which enables him to marry an actress on the make. Although his fortune is £1.3 million in today's money, she runs through it in an improbably short period of time (doesn't he ever read bank statements?) and kicks him out of the house which, for some reason, has been signed over to her. This step in his decline is due to his sheer stupidity.Next we find him as a taxi dancer in France. How or why he has ended up doing this job is a mystery. Is he incapable of holding down a normal job? If not, why doesn't he return to acting? When the sudden irruption of daylight into the dance hall reveals how tawdry it all is, this seems to come as a revelation to him. Apparently, it hadn't previously occurred to him that squiring middle-aged women round a dance floor, as a low-rent gigolo, might be regarded as a bit demeaning.He takes this disillusionment badly and promptly sinks even lower until he ends up in a Marseilles flop house, where he is now ill and delirious. It is difficult to account for this final stage in his decline other than that is was needed to complete a predetermined pattern.With the aid of some sailors he returns to England and eventually makes it back to his own home. It is not obvious what he has done to earn this help from these relative strangers. His father is now full of repentance and says: "Forgive me, I know everything."For a youth of whom great things were expected, it cannot be said that Robby acquits himself very well in his adversity.That is the material Hitchcock has to work with and although he has fun with a few of the scenes (as other reviewers have documented) there really isn't anything he can do to salvage this pointless farrago. Ultimately, this is not a story: it is just a succession of Ivor Novello's self-pitying, masochistic fantasies.Of course, from the very beginning of his career Hitchcock had command of a rich cinematic vocabulary so you can find a number of Hitchcock touches even in this picture. Individual scenes undoubtedly have their merit, but the picture as a whole is just an utterly negligible trifle.In the Sixties, when Hitchcock was interviewed at length by Francois Truffaut about his whole body of work, he had very little to say about this movie.Perhaps we can best honour his memory by following his lead.

This story is sort of like the parable of the Protigal Son with LOTS of changes--mainly, the son is a total idiot and the father actually is the one who is the judgmental jerk. It begins with a couple of college chums. One is rich and nice (in other words, a total patsy) and the other is poor and went to school on a scholarship. When the poor one does something stupid, the rich friend takes responsibility (why, we must only assume because he's an imbecile). When he's then thrown out of school, his father disowns him. Here is where it's more like the Protigal Son, as the young moron spends his new inheritance on drunken living among rich low-lifes and he proceeds to throw his life away--though, once again, we are unsure why. After all, with this inheritance he should have a lovely life even after having been thrown out of school (30000 Pounds was a HUGE sum of money in 1927). In the end, the young guy is a total physical and mental wreck when he somehow manages to struggle home.Even by the standards of the silent era, "Downhill" (also known as "When Boys Leave Home") is an incredibly old fashioned and overly moralistic sort of film--the sort you would never associate with Alfred Hitchcock. However, at this point in his career, there was no 'Hitchcock style' and he made a wide range of films--not just suspense and murder films. However, the story itself is so totally lacking that it really didn't give this fine director much with which to work. However, in his defense, at least he did an exceptional job when it came to the cinematography and the film had a wonderful artistry about it that sets it apart. In fact, it's so lovely that I still mildly recommend the film--even with the rather dumb plot.