Downhill (1927 film)

Downhill
Original Movie Poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by	Michael Balcon C. M. Woolf
Written by	Play: Constance Collier Ivor Novello Adaption: Eliot Stannard
Starring	Ivor Novello Robin Irvine Isabel Jeans Ian Hunter Violet Farebrother
Cinematography	Claude L. McDonnell
Edited by	Ivor Montagu Lionel Rich
Production company	Gainsborough Pictures
Distributed by	Woolf & Freedman Film Service (UK) Sono Art-World Wide Pictures (US)
Release dates	24 October 1927 (1927-10-24)
Running time	80 min (UK) 74 min (USA)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	Silent film English intertitles

Downhill is a 1927 British silent drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ivor Novello, Robin Irvine, and Isabel Jeans, and based on the play Down Hill by Novello and Constance Collier. The film was made by Gainsborough Pictures at their Islington studios. The film is Hitchcock's fifth film as director. The American alternative title for this film was When Boys Leave Home.

Plot

At an expensive English boarding school for boys, Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello) is School Captain and star rugby player. He and his best friend Tim (Robin Irvine) start seeing a waitress Mabel (Annette Benson). Out of pique, she tells the headmaster that she is pregnant and that Roddy is the father. In fact it was Tim, who cannot afford to be expelled because he needs to win a scholarship to attend Oxford University. Promising Tim that he will never reveal the truth, Roddy accepts expulsion.

Returning to his parents’ home, he finds that his father (Norman McKinnel) believes him guilty of the false accusation.

Leaving home, Roddy finds work as an actor in a theatre. He marries the leading actress Julia (Isabel Jeans) after inheriting £30,000 from a relation. The unfaithful Julia secretly continues an affair with her leading man (Ian Hunter) and discards Roddy after his inheritance is exhausted. He becomes a gigolo in a Paris music hall but soon quits over self-loathing at romancing older women for money.

Roddy ends up alone and delirious in a shabby room in Marseilles. Some sailors take pity on him and ship him back home, possibly hoping for reward. Roddy's father has learned the truth about the waitress's false accusation during his son's absence and joyfully welcomes him back. Roddy resumes his previous life.

Cast

• Ivor Novello – Roddy Berwick
• Robin Irvine – Tim Wakely
• Isabel Jeans – Julia
• Ian Hunter – Archie
• Norman McKinnel – Sir Thomas Berwick
• Annette Benson – Mabel
• Sybil Rhoda – Sybil Wakely
• Lilian Braithwaite – Lady Berwick
• Violet Farebrother – The Poet
• Ben Webster – Dr. Dawson
• Hannah Jones – The Dressmaker
• Jerrold Robertshaw – Reverend Henry Wakely
• Barbara Gott – Madame Michet
• Alf Goddard – The Swede
• J. Nelson – Hibbert

Production

The film is based on the play, Down Hill, written by its star Ivor Novello and Constance Collier under the combined alias David L'Estrange.

The stage performance had a short run in the West End and longer in the provinces. In the play Novello thrilled his female fans by washing his bare legs after the rugby match. An appreciative James Agate, drama critic for the London Sunday Times, wrote "The scent of good honest soap crosses the footlights". Hitchcock included a similar scene of Novello for the film in which he is shown naked from the waist up.

Hitchcock's emerging style is well demonstrated in this film. He used a variety of screen techniques to tell the story with a minimum of title cards, preferring instead to allow the film's visual narrative tell the story. A good example is the scene after Roddy leaves home. It opens with the title card "The world of make-believe". This is followed by a closeup of Roddy in a tuxedo. The camera pulls back to reveal Roddy is actually playing a waiter on stage in a theatre. Hitchcock also incorporated shots of a descending escalator at Maida Vale tube station as a visual metaphor for Roddy's downhill descent. He experimented with dream sequences by shooting them in super impositions and blurred images. He played with shadow and light in much the same way as directors of German expressionist films of the time.

In the original prints of the film, the scene involving Novello's voyage home on a boat was tinted a "sickly" green to express mental torment and nausea.

External links

• Downhill at IMDb
• Downhill at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Downhill at AllMovie