bbmtwist 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.

TheLittleSongbird As a huge Hitchcock fan, Downhill was an interesting film but while not among his weakest it is a long way from being among his best. The acting is not bad at all, in fact decent(likewise with the chemistry between them), Ivor Novello's performance is expressive and moving if not always subtle, Isabel Jeans is a sympathetic Julia and Annette Benson makes Mabel's scheming believable. Ian Hunter is also very naturalistic in his role. The production values and Hitchcock's direction are Downhill's best qualities, both are superb. The film is really beautifully shot, some of the best and most ahead-of-its-time photography of any of Hitchcock's silent films. The choice of locations are appropriate and well-utilised, particularly with the scenes set in the nightclub and theatre. The hand-held camera shots signifying Roddy's delirium, the slow pan shot during the dance in the Parisian hall scene and the long pulling-back shot with us thinking that Roddy is dressing for a fancy night, then us thinking that he is waiter and then we realise that he is on the stage stand out as being especially good technically. Hitchcock wasn't yet in his comfort zone, but his direction not only shows technical skill but also early in his career being able to show the psychological insight that he was often so good at. As well as enhancing the mood. From a narrative standpoint unfortunately Downhill falls far short in comparison, for all how strong his visuals and direction are Hitchcock apparently had little interest in the story and it comes through loud and clear. The story creaks that wooden floorboards in a deserted house, makes very little sense and does drag quite badly at times. The characters are not very interesting and often one-sided which, especially with the female characters, may leave a sour taste in the mouth. The script touches on the social hypocrisy and the separation of classes- morally mostly- but to me it does very little with those themes and while interesting for when and where Downhill was set it doesn't hold up well today. On the whole, a mixed view here, loved it technically, didn't care for it narratively. 5/10 Bethany Cox

James Hitchcock During my youth in the sixties and seventies silent films were quite regularly shown on British television, but today are they are few and far between even on specialist movie channels, and are hardly ever shown on terrestrial television, perhaps because the generation that can remember the silent era are mostly dead. Many people therefore do not realise that Alfred Hitchcock made a number of silent films during the twenties; they are much less well-known than his Hollywood films of the forties, fifties and sixties, and even than the British talkies like "The Lady Vanishes" which he made in the thirties. "Downhill", recently shown on Sky Classics, is one of them, dating from 1927, towards the end of the silent era. (It was released in the same year as the first talking picture, "The Jazz Singer"). As the film opens its hero, Roddy Berwick, appears to be a fortunate young man. The son of an aristocratic family, he is School Captain at an exclusive public school. He is popular, intelligent and the school's star rugby player. His world collapses when Mabel, a waitress at a local café, announces to the headmaster that she is pregnant and that Roddy is the father. The real culprit, in fact, is Roddy's best friend Tim, but Mabel appears to have singled Roddy out because his family is wealthier than Tim's and she is hoping that she can blackmail them. Out of loyalty to his friend, however, Roddy accepts the blame and expulsion from the school. This is not the end of his misfortunes, however. He is disowned by his father, who believes him guilty of the accusation. He goes to work as an actor and marries a famous actress named Julia, but the marriage is an unhappy one and she leaves him for another man. He inherits £30,000 from a relation, but loses it all, largely due to Julia's extravagance. He becomes a gigolo in Paris, but quits this line of work in disgust and ends up penniless and starving. The theme of Mabel's pregnancy is treated very obscurely, so much so that some have misinterpreted these scenes and incorrectly concluded that Roddy is expelled on a false accusation of theft. This is because the British censors discouraged any discussion of sexual matters. Although the American Hays Office was not set up until the 1930s, its British equivalent, the British Board of Film Censors, had been established in 1912, with the result that film censorship in Britain during the twenties tended to be stricter than in America (and, indeed, than in many European countries). In later years Hitchcock was to become famous for his suspense thrillers; nearly all his Hollywood films, with "Mr and Mrs Smith" a rare exception, fall into this category. In his early British period, however, he made numerous films in other genres as well, and "Downhill" is a melodrama rather than a thriller. It does, however, show evidence of some of the techniques that were later to make him famous, particularly in films like "Spellbound" in which he could indulge his love of the surreal and dreamlike. In one scene Roddy, taken ill while on a ship, experiences a delirious nightmare. Hitchcock also makes use of shots of a descending escalator, not for any literal meaning but as a visual metaphor for Roddy's descent into misfortune, which is of course the significance of the title "Downhill". (It is strange how English and many other languages use the expression "going downhill" as a metaphor for a change in one's fortunes for the worse, even though in reality the lowlands at the foot of a hill are often a more pleasant place to be than the hilltop itself). True colour films were very rare in the twenties, but "Downhill", in common with a number of other monochrome films from the period makes use of the device of film tinting, in which different scenes are tinted in different shades. Orange is normally used for interior scenes and daytime exteriors, blue for nighttime exteriors and green for scenes set at sea and the nightmare sequences. Only a few scenes are in straightforward black-and-white. Even in my youth, most of the silent movies shown on TV were comedies. Indeed, at the time I formed the quite erroneous impression that during the silent era nobody ever made films about serious subjects and that my grandparents' generation only ever went to the cinema to laugh at the antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy. The sort of slapstick at which these comedians excelled has passed the test of time better than the serious films of the era which can look very alien today, largely because they required non-naturalistic acting techniques with which we are unfamiliar. Dialogue had to be supplied by title cards, and in "Downhill" Hitchcock keeps his use of these to a minimum. Emotion had to be conveyed through facial expression and gesture alone, something which must have appeared strange to British people in the twenties who generally believed in keeping a stiff upper lip and regarded gesticulating while talking as a foreign eccentricity. "Downhill", however, shows just how powerful silent film could be as a story-telling medium. The film's happy ending may seem sentimental today, but at the time "vice punished and virtue rewarded" was an established dramatic convention, and Roddy's misfortunes are due not to his vices but to an excess of virtue, which enables the cowardly Tim and the manipulative Julia to take advantage of his good nature. Once one gets used to the melodramatic acting techniques, one can appreciate the power of some of the performances here, especially from Ivor Novello (today better remembered as a musician and composer than as an actor) as Roddy, Annette Benson as the scheming Mabel and Isabel Jeans as Julia. The film makes compelling viewing for anyone with an interest in Hitchcock's work. 8/10

bensonj The story, of course, is not acceptable now. It's based on a play written by two performers who were major stage figures in their time but are now principally remembered for a few film roles (Novello in Hitchcock's THE LODGER, Collier as the has-been actress teaching acting to young girls in LaCava's STAGE DOOR). The story tells of the long, melodramatic, total downfall and degeneration of a son of wealth with a seemingly bright future, the hero of the rugby field, who is disgraced when he takes the rap for his impoverished roommate at his British school. Modern audiences tend to find this sort of melodrama, no matter how well done, a bit ridiculous. The anguished query of young Novello when he's told that he's expelled, "Does this mean, sir, that I won't be able to play rugby for the Old Boys?" is justly famous for its fatuousness. But the film itself is not fatuous, or ridiculous in the slightest. It shows Hitchcock to be one of the greatest of all the masters of the silent cinema, using an array of sophisticated film techniques to build a narrative complexity that goes far beyond the melodramatic plot. The pictorial quality of the film is lush and dense and the photography is sophisticated. For one thing, he uses very few titles. Of course, he was not alone in trying to keep silent-film intertitles to a minimum. But directors like Murnau tended to tell simple "timeless" stories with very formal pictography, the story told through a series of strong, simple, iconic images, the characters hardly speaking. Hitchcock has preserved verisimilitude by having his characters talk as much as they want. If what they're saying isn't important, such as the small talk among the rugby spectators at the beginning, why show it in titles? The casual milieu is established more clearly, in fact, if one doesn't know exactly what's being said. Hitchcock's use of this technique is even more evident in THE FARMER'S WIFE (also adapted from a play), where the characters talk and talk, but rarely is there a title. We talk constantly in real life, and one of the things that makes some silents seem stilted is the refusal to have the characters say anything unless what they say is shown in a title. Even when characters reveal their inner feelings to each other, the words they speak are often not the best communicators. Hitchcock shows relationships through subtle facial expressions, body posture, and observant human movements, through editing, little close-ups or vignettes of action, and placement of camera. All sorts of naturalistic bits of business are used to make the story clear and dramatically interesting. These techniques convey subtle relationships even more strongly when titles are not there to "explain" the content in words to the viewer, undercutting the images. Amid symbolic images of his "descent," such as traveling down London's endless escalators to the underground trains, and riding down in an elevator, the story of Novello's decline is laid out in melodramatic detail. A few incidents, and Hitchcock's handling of them, are described below. The film opens on the day of a big rugby game, and the visiting families dine with the students in the school's great dining hall. At one point, the sister of Novello's poor roommate steps into a stairwell and sees two small boys fighting on the stair. Then a door opens, and she glimpses Novello toweling up after a shower. Nothing comes of either of these incidents (she doesn't see Novello again); they are just original, well staged, atmospheric moments. Having attended a British boarding school for a year in the fifties, I can attest that these are particularly telling touches. Long, aimless, vicious fights were a hallmark of that existence, and I also remember incidents of women embarrassed at being out of place in a boys' school. The roommate gets a note from the attractive waitress to meet him at the sweet shop where she works. At the same time, she flirts with Novello. The two young men visit the girl at the sweet shop, and there's a long scene where each of them dance with her in a back room. She obviously favors Novello, and Hitchcock cuts from shots of Novello dancing with the shop-girl to the gradually disapproving stare of his companion. However, as the other fellow goes out, she points to the sign "Closed Wednesday Afternoons," a typical example of visual storytelling which not only economically indicates (without titles) that she has asked him to return, but also the furtive nature of the invitation. Later, she comes to the school and accuses Novello of making her pregnant (not of theft, as the IMDB synopsis and other sources state). She accuses him, apparently, because she was mad at him for ignoring her, and because he's rich and can presumably pay off. The actress playing the shop girl (Daisy Jackson, per a photo caption in the Citadel Hitchcock book, though she isn't in any credits listing, including in that book and IMDB) is very attractive and an excellent silent film actress. After Novello is cast out of his father's house, the scene changes, with a title, "Make Believe." We see Novello in a tuxedo, talking. The camera pulls back and we find him a waiter. After some action, the scene is revealed to be part of a musical; he's a stage actor now. "Make believe" for sure; first we think he's in high society, then a waiter, finally an actor! After falling further, we find him in France, a male taxi-dancer under the thumb of an iron-handed battle-ax. He spends an evening at the table of an older woman (Violet Farebrother) who sympathetically listens to his life story. But at the end of the evening, so late that it's now morning, a man has an attack and the windows are opened to let in fresh air. The glaring sunlight floods into the foul night-spot, and Novello looks around at the dissipated, apathetic revellers, looks at the now-much-faded "interesting" older woman, and realizes the horror of his surroundings. The scene exudes a profound sense of revulsion and loathing, a depth of feeling on a plane rarely found in Hitchcock. Finally, Novello is fever-stricken and delirious in a dockside dive, cared for by scruffy blacks. As they pile him on to a small steamer, his shaky passage to the ship, on the gang-plank and into the cabin is presented in striking hand-held point-of-view shots. The sophisticated narrative style, the profusion of telling details, the richness of the visuals, all made the film gripping and dramatic, despite the hoary plot and a slight over-length. Before Hitchcock found his "niche," he used his talents to make quite a few unexpectedly eclectic films that showed a remarkable talent, constantly inventive and original, continually using film in creative ways. His silent films are largely ignored because they, for the most part, do not conform to the Hitchcock subject matter. But he's one of the great silent directors! He understood the medium and used it more subtly and creatively than many more famous practitioners.