My favorite Hitchcock

(from 2011)

I think I probably have all the surviving Hitchcock pictures on DVD, apart from two short films made during the last war. I even have the curiosity Elstree Calling – a musical featuring variety acts of 1930. Although I actually bought this for Lilly Morris singing Why Am I Always a Bridesmaid, not for the ‘humorous’ links Hitch filmed. And I saw Hitchcock in the flesh once; when he did a photo shoot for Frenzy in London in the 1970s.

So you could say that I count myself a Hitchcock fan. His best movie? It depends. For sheer old fashioned entertainment value, the re-working of the basic idea of 39 Steps in North by Northwest (chased by villains and police at same time) and Rear Window loom high.

But I am going to be perverse and choose my favourite sequence from a Hitchcock film – technically brilliant for its time, and something I can watch, and ultimately laugh at over again and again. The film is Young and Innocent, made in Britain in 1937 after 39 Steps but before The Lady Vanishes.

It is based loosely on the book A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey – an excellent writer and in her day, a serious historical playwright. Typically, Hitchcock omits the meaning of the novel’s title, and even chooses a totally different murderer to the book to round things off. Minor details really, and no doubt Miss Tey received her royalties and learned a lesson about the film industry. But it was another one of those films where an innocent man is accused of murder, but helped by girl, he flees from the police and they find the real culprit in time – and aaaah - fall in love along the way. I guess it is 39 Steps all over again (although Hitchcock drastically changed that from the novel too).

My sequence? The fugitive and helpful girl are looking for a murderer with eyes that twitch. The girl goes into the Grand Hotel and enters a very large room, dining at one end, and dancing at the other. The camera in a high crane shot travels from the hotel lobby over a wall into the hall, and then continues for some time over the diners and then over the heads of the dancers. There is a band playing at the far end, with a white conductor and vocalist, while the rest of the band are in black-face (a touch of the Al Jolson’s). The song is called The Drummer Man, which requires a small drum solo. Without a break and keeping in focus the crane shot travels past the vocalist and gets closer and closer to the drummer. It comes right up to his blacked-up face until all you seen on screen is a giant close up of his eyes – which suddenly twitch!

It is all done in one brilliant take lasting over a minute – a tour de force for the time.

So how can I laugh over it? Well, the villain suddenly sees his nemesis in the dance hall. Not only does he twitch some more, but his drumming goes all over the place – and when the police arrive you have this lovely sequence of the band playing and the bandleader and others looking confused over their shoulders, as the whole drummer’s performance goes completely down the drain and he gives himself away completely.

Naturally much of the film is dated. Some of the humor is somewhat forced by today’s standards. But I like it.

Of course, if you asked me to-morrow, I might select something else.