Easy Virtue - Alfred Hitchcock

 Easy Virtue, Hitchcock's next silent film, was released in 1927. The story starts with a blurry scene of people and possibly faces. Then a monocle is lifted and it becomes clear that we are in a court setting with an attorney across from us. Larita is being sued for divorce by her husband. She was having her portrait painted by an artist who was falling in love with her. Her husband decided they were having an affair and divorced her. She leaves England for the south of France after the divorce. She meets John, they fall in love. There is a wonderful scene where you watch a phone operator connect John's call to Larita, and she listens in. It is clear just by her expressions what that phone call is, and that John and Larita are now engaged to be married. After the wedding, they move back to England to his family's country house. She tries to fit in but his family doesn't do much to help - to the point of having his original intended over for dinner the first night they are home. John's mother recognizes her, and the scandal of the divorce. At the end of the film, Larita is leaving the court again having divorced John. While I didn't catch it, possibly due to the quality of the picture, Hitch did make a cameo walking past tennis courts. 

Now, what may surprise you is that this is a film based on a play by Noel Coward! I am well aware that Coward did not just write comedies, though that is a lot of what he is known for. The first Coward play I ever saw was "The Vortex" which was a very serious play about drug use, and homosexuality. However, there were some funny, light-hearted moments to it, and the language of Coward was a joy to listen to. Translating Coward into a silent film could not have been easy, and Hitchcock's adaptation by Eliot Stannard works as a film, but with very little joy to it. As I was watching it, I kept thinking to myself that I had another version of this same material. Indeed I did, so I watched that as a study in contrast.

In 2008 Stephen Elliott directed a film version with a fantastic cast: Jessica Biel, Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Ben Barnes to list a few of the cast members. The story is the same, but the adaptation sticks closer to Coward when it comes to language, and it is very funny. It isn't focused so much on the court and the original divorce, but instead on John bringing home an American race car driver named Larita and trying to get her to fit into his family. It is very good, and just goes to show how the adaptation can make all the difference to a story. 

Note: the version of Hitchcock's film was watched as part of a box set named Legend Series. It is a collection of four discs, and 18 Hitchcock films, along with two TV episodes. Some of his early films are only available in these random collections. They have not been remastered, and some may not have been restored much as the quality is not always good. But they are interesting to watch for purposes like this blog.