Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1927 • United Kingdom
Starring Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Norman McKinnel
That’s the direction things go for boarding-school student and star rugby player Roddy Berwick (celebrated songwriter and matinee idol Ivor Novello) when he falls from golden boy to public disgrace and bottoms out as a Parisian gigolo after accepting the blame for a friend’s scandalous indiscretion. In his fourth film as director, also known as WHEN BOYS LEAVE HOME, Alfred Hitchcock puts forth the earliest expressions of what would become his recurring themes: the “wrong man” and the transference of guilt.
Up Next in British Hitchcock
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Blackmail
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1929 • United Kindgom
Starring Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, John LongdenAlfred Hitchcock’s—and Britain’s—first talkie finds the director using sound technology as inventively as he used the camera. Anny Ondra (prototype for the many Hitchcock blondes to come) play...
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Murder!
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1930 • United Kingdom
Starring Herbert Marshall, Norah Baring, Phyllis KonstamOne of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature obsessions—the “wrong man” motif he would return to time and again—receives one of its earliest treatments in this innovative whodunit. After a you...
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Rich and Strange
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1931 • United Kingdom
Starring Henry Kendall, Joan BarryTaking its all-too-appropriate title from “The Tempest,” this fascinatingly offbeat satiric drama concerns a stuck-in-a-rut young couple who, upon coming into a generous inheritance, immediately use the mo...
