Downhill (Film)
- Ivor Novello: Roddy Berwick
- Ben Webster: Dr. Dowson
- Norman McKinnell: Sir Thomas Berwick
- Robin Irvine: Tim Wakeley
- Jerrold Robertshaw: Rev. Henry Wakeley
- Sybil Rhoda: Sybil Wakeley
- Annette Benson: Mabel
- Lilian Braithwaite: Lady Berwick
- Isabel Jeans: Julia
- Ian Hunter: Archie
- Hannah Jones: dresser
- Barbara God: Madame Michet
- Violet Farebrother: poetess
- Alf Goddard: Sailor
Downhill is a British silent film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. It is based on several theater sketches of Constance Collier and Ivor Novello ( under the pseudonym David L' Estrange ).
Action
The London boarders Roddy Berwick is unjustly accused to have impregnated a girl ( it covers a childhood friend because of an old vow ) and is expelled from the boarding school. He leaves his home, marries a dancer ( which exploits him ) and is a dancer in Paris. Just before he leaves Europe, he changes his mind and returns home. There, it turns out his innocence.
Background
With his fourth feature film Hitchcock fulfilled his contractual obligation towards Michael Balcon, after he had already signed with British International Pictures. The film is an adaptation for theater, what Hitchcock retrospect designated as an error because the artistic possibilities offered only a few open spaces in the filmic adaptation of stage plays in silent films. However, the film has drawn in the wake of the brilliant previous film The Tenant and due to Hitchcock's rising popularity sell quite well.
Interestingly, the film is due to the use of several typical Hitchcock shear motifs: the innocent suspect, the debt transfer and the game with religious motifs, in this case of the prodigal son. Hitchcock considered this film mainly as an exercise, and as well as various recurring in his later work style elements can be found in downhill again.
Criticism
The English critic and Hitchcock biographer John Russell Taylor wrote in 1978: "When was downhill, nobody worked throughout the UK film with such a cinematic imagination, told no other movie with this gripping and fascinating mastery of cinematic possibilities. Yes, you had the feeling that Hitch could not help, not even on an issue that was not him. "