22. The Pleasure Garden (1925, Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock) The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor is doing an Alfred Hitchcock festival over the next few months, so Ill apologize in advance for the amount of early Hitchcock films youll all have to hear about. The Pleasure Garden is Hitchs directorial debut, a silent film about the romantic travails of a chorus girl. In a tour-de-force opening shot, Hitchcock runs through a lot of motifs that will pop up later in his work, but absent that and a climax that feels decidedly within his wheelhouse, The Pleasure Garden feels like a poor fit for what he would eventually do masterfully as a director. Also, being from 1925 and very much a product of its time, the film is casually racist and misogynist, which makes it a little hard to watch through a modern lens. Mostly, I found the bulk of the film too melodramatic (a genre that doesnt work particularly well for me in silent films), although there are moments when it shines. The showing I attended was accompanied by a live-organ score, which was excellent and definitely elevated some of the weaker moments. Im definitely glad this has been restored as a historical artifact of the early days of a master, but Im not sure I can recommend it as much more than a historical curiosity.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 19:56:41 +0000
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