THE SKIN GAME (1931)

‘There isn’t much to be said about it.’  That’s Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut in their classic interview book, talking about filming John Galsworthy’s 1920 play.  And, for the first two reels (all character setup & exposition on an Old Money/New Money clash in England’s Lake District), he’s right.  Hitch’s evident disinterest at covering two families at war over a property grab that will turn a pastoral landscape into smoke-stacked factories showing in a series of unnuanced mastershots.  But 23" in, a special effect optical turns that pretty rural scene into a poster for a public auction of the property that has the film jump to life with tracking shots, experimental dissolves, punctuating closeups of bidders, with the sale now a mini-course of Early Talkie suspense technique.  Not all works, but it does allow Galsworthy’s themes of blackmail threats, payoffs, class warfare and an increasingly useless gentry to gain interest.  As the self-made capitalist striver, Edmund Gwenn takes the first of his three-and-a-half Hitchcocks (three films, one tv appearance) and makes a tasty meal of it.  But you do need to get thru that first act.  (Note: many lousy Public Domain copies, but an immaculate edition out from KINO.) 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For a better Early British Talkie of better Galsworthy (his next filmed), LOYALTIES/’33, with Basil Rathbone as a tough-minded Jew fighting insular British anti-Semitism.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/02/loyalties-1933.html