Young and Innocent - Alfred Hitchcock

An argument between a husband and his wife Charlotte. He accuses her of cheating, lying, running around with boys. The next morning a body is seen washing in with the tide. A man (Robert Tisdall) is walking along the cliff, sees it and comes down to the beach to see if he can help. He rolls over the body and discovers it is Charlotte, his friend. He runs off to get help, not noticing that he is seen by two girls running away from a dead body. When he comes back with the police, the girls accuse him of the murder and the police take him away for questioning.

This is the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's 1937 film Young and Innocent, released in the US as The Girl Was Young. Based on the novel A Shilling for Candles written by Josephine Tey, it is another classic in the line of Hitchcock's murder-mystery-romance-comedies. While murder is serious, and there is a serious tone to the situation, there is still romance and moments of comedy. Robert (played by Derrick de Marney) faints after a long night of being questioned. He is revived in the arms of Erica (played by Nova Pilbeam from The Man Who Knew Too Much). There is instant attraction from his side. Due to some blundering lawyers, and police Robert is able to escape in a crowd leaving a court room, and by using the lawyers glasses as part of a disguise. You will find through out the Hitchcock catalog that he doesn't hold police in very high esteem. One of the early stories about Hitchcock is how his parents had him locked up in a prison for a couple hours in order to get him to show respect, or teach him a lesson. Clearly I don't think that worked the way they wanted.

According to The Art of Alfred Hitchcock (Donald Spoto), there is a motif of vision and eyes in this movie. Hitch himself has a cameo as a photographer, Robert gets away from the courtroom by stealing the lawyers glasses, there is a comment about someone starving to death and birds eating out his eyes, as well as a game of blindmans bluff. It seems to be saying that nothing is as it seems to be. That idea is somewhat standard for Hitchcock at this point, and you will find this in a lot of his films. As always, he has some great transitions, and he knows how to tell a really good, suspenseful story. One aspect I loved was a shot of a forest dissolving into a village scene with a train passing under a bridge while a car passes over it, and zooming in on a car sitting just off the train yard...all done with models. A cut after the zoom reveals the car sitting off the train yard has our two heroes - Robert and Erica. There is also a crane tracking shot that goes through a hotel, across a crowded dance floor and lands on the face of the killer. 

A word of warning - the band playing in the hotel is all in blackface. As much as I may have enjoyed this film, I probably won't watch it again because of that. I didn't even consider that blackface would have cross the ocean and been in England, I thought it strictly an American thing. There is some great suspense through out as Robert and Erica try to do the job of the police and find the truth. I watched it as part of the now out-of-print Premiere Collection, however I'm certain it is easily available. The Premiere Collection includes commentary with film historians Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn, isolated music and effects track, audio Hitchcock interviews with Peter Bogdanovich and Françoís Truffaut, as well as restoration comparison. Quick note that you may start seeing the same actors showing up in his films. In this case you will see Erica's father is played by Percy Marmont who was also in Secret Agent, Erica's aunt is played by Mary Clare who you will see in The Lady Vanishes. Finally Erica's uncle is played by Basil Radford who also is in The Lady Vanishes as comic character Charters, as well as the Hitchcock film Jamaica Inn. Interestingly, the character of Charters also shows up in one of Carol Reed's films Night Train to Munich, and in a film named Crook's Tour where Charters and his compatriot Caldicott are the leads.