The Pleasure Garden

This is a moral tale of a couple of women, one good and the other lost in her own self- importance. It's also about two men who find themselves on the opposite side of fence as well. One is a kind, caring guy and the other a selfish womanizing cad. The first part of the show is about how two women in a chorus line evolve. One knows she has it and immediately demands the attention of everyone. She has been embraced by her friend who has been in the chorus for a while, but one she gains popularity, she has no time for the other woman. A marriage of convenience takes place and things really unravel. Also, the young starlet begins to realize that all her attention can't seem to make her happy. Things get kind of weird when the cad ends up in some island paradise with a native cookie whom he uses in every way possible. There are some really ridiculous confrontations and overacting by the principles. Everything gets wrapped up kind of neatly. Hitchcock was obviously learning the camera. I disagree with a previous comment about a monkey hanging around a film set being able to come up with this film. There are already hints of a style coming to the fore. It's too bad a couple of other first efforts have been lost to the inevitable decomposition of film (or simply lost).

The Pleasure Garden is the first film that Alfred Hitchcock directed to completion. It's a nice look into the earliest directorial thoughts and techniques of the master. Even in this earliest film, we can see signs of what would become some of his signature trademarks. I enjoyed some of the point of view shots early in the film with the blurred view of the man looking through his monocle as well as the gentleman looking through the binoculars at the show girls legs. There is also a spiral staircase in the opening of this movie. Not that it was used like the staircase in Vertigo, but it made me smile thinking of how important that would be in his later film. The story deals with the idea of infidelity. Jill (Carmelita Geraghty) is an aspiring dancer who gets engaged to Hugh (John Stuart) who has to leave for work overseas. Patsy (Virginia Valli), who has helped Jill get her start, starts to worry about Jill keeping her promise to wait for Hugh. Jill's career is taking off and she begins to fool around with other guys. Patsy marries Levett (Miles Mander), Hugh's friend who also goes overseas to work with Hugh. Unlike Jill, Patsy remains true to her husband, thinking only of being with him. She receives a letter that her husband has taken ill and scrapes up the money to go be with her husband in his time of need. When she arrives, she finds that he has taken to drinking and island women. That's when the trouble ensues. I enjoyed Hitch's first film. It's a little slow starting, but picks up pace as it goes along. I liked seeing Cuddles, the dog, thrown in for a little comic relief to contrast the seriousness of the film, which of course is another of Hitchcock's trademarks. There was also a nice, subtle score by Lee Erwin, that fit the film well.

*** (Out of 4)

Looking at Hitchcock's early pictures, one struggles to see signs of his genius, like looking through every manger for the baby with the halo. But this, the first complete Hitchcock movie, shows no signs of his future greatness. He is clearly a journeyman director, some one who shows promise, but sent to Berlin for his final exam.

On the plus side, this movie starts off surprisingly well, with a snappy, American-paced, chorines-on-the-town plot. If they had cast Marion Davies and Marie Prevost in this, it would be typical, if rather underwritten. The start moves fast, plot points pop up, and suddenly we take a turn and the story descends into melodrama.

Fairly typical of Hitchcock, you might say and you would be right, but he hasn't got any sense of what his chosen symbols are -- both leads are brunettes, which will come as a surprise to anyone who knows Hitchcock's taste for icy blondes. The symbolic items are standard and not particularly shocking -- Virginia Valli's wedding-bed deflowering is indicated by an apple with a large chunk bitten out of it -- and the actors are not really up to their jobs.

Hitchcock was never a great director of actors but a great director of scenes. By 1927 his visual flair got his bosses to invest in great actors for his pictures, starting with Ivor Novello for THE LODGER. But here, everyone is.... at best, adequate, with Miles Mander very stagy and whoever plays his native lover -- still miscredited in the IMDb as Nita Naldi -- seemingly brain-damaged.

There are a couple of interestingly composed visual glosses: the door that Mander must go through looks like a Turkish harem door and the decoration on either side differs dramatically; on one side is life, on another death. But this is UFA, with great cameramen and all the technicians who made great expressionist fare like CALIGARI and modernist masterpieces like Lang's work ready and eager to work.... and there's none of that here.

I find it hard to give this an exact rating: the great start is sunk by the foolishness of the ending, and Hitchcock at the the start of his career is not the film maker he would be in another thirty years -- or four. But it is Hitchcock, and therefore demands our attention, so I'll give it a good mark for that.

But if it weren't Hitchcock's first film, no one would care. It probably wouldn't even still be in existence.

This was Hitchcock's first ever film as director to be completed and it is indicative of his huge talent. Despite its age and therefore somewhat primitive production the young Hitch does a superb, professional and classy job. The film maintains interest throughout and is still funny, entertaining and impressive when viewed today! Hitchcock imbues it with directorial flourishes of brilliance with clever, interesting camera shots, intelligent storytelling and little bits of his psychological themes which strengthen all his films.

In conclusion this is a superb film considering its age and the fact it is Hitchcock's debut.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by this film. It's true that little of the Hitchcock we've come to love comes through but there are quite a few touches at that and all of them work. The travel scenes at Lake Como and somewhere in the South Sea work very well indeed and there's precious little in this film that doesn't contribute meaningfully to the movie. I would agree with one reviewer that Cuddles the dog gives some of the scenes humor. The transformation of two of the characters for the worst is loud and clear and the plot is not only crystal clear but quite effective. I'm glad to say I've seen this one - my last of all the Hitchcocks! Curtis Stotlar