The Pleasure Garden

This is a moral tale of a couple of women, one good and the other lost in her own self- importance. It's also about two men who find themselves on the opposite side of fence as well. One is a kind, caring guy and the other a selfish womanizing cad. The first part of the show is about how two women in a chorus line evolve. One knows she has it and immediately demands the attention of everyone. She has been embraced by her friend who has been in the chorus for a while, but one she gains popularity, she has no time for the other woman. A marriage of convenience takes place and things really unravel. Also, the young starlet begins to realize that all her attention can't seem to make her happy. Things get kind of weird when the cad ends up in some island paradise with a native cookie whom he uses in every way possible. There are some really ridiculous confrontations and overacting by the principles. Everything gets wrapped up kind of neatly. Hitchcock was obviously learning the camera. I disagree with a previous comment about a monkey hanging around a film set being able to come up with this film. There are already hints of a style coming to the fore. It's too bad a couple of other first efforts have been lost to the inevitable decomposition of film (or simply lost).

At the age of 25, Alfred Hitchcock, who had been an assistant director to Michael Balcon, was given the chance to direct his first film, which was of course silent. It is very good and showed at once that he had talent. Assistant director on the film was a girl named Alma Reville, who was to become Hitchcock's wife and lifelong partner in all of his film projects. The film is based on a popular novel by 'Oliver Sandys', which was the pen name of a woman whose real name was Marguerite Jarvis, and who in this same year appeared as an actress under the name of Marguerite Evans in the comedy film STAGESTRUCK, with Gloria Swanson. The title of this film is the name of a music hall in London, where two girls are in the chorus together, and share a room in Brixton. The melodrama concerns the adventures of their lives and respective fates. The film was shot at Babelsburg Studios in Germany and had an international cast. The American actress Virginia Valli plays Patsy, the good girl of the two. And Jill, the girl who goes to the bad, is played by another American actress, Carmelita Geraghty. The German actor Karl Falkenberg plays the unpleasant and sinister Prince Ivan, who leads Jill astray. Falkenberg acted in 100 films between 1916 and 1936, after which he disappears from history. Probably he was Jewish, was banned from the screen by the Nazis, and then sent to a death camp. Possibly the best performance in the film is by British actor Miles Mander, who outdid Falkenberg by appearing in 107 films, between 1920 and 1947, including WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). In this film he plays a cad who married Patsy and then betrays her with a mistress and goes to pieces with drink and decadence. He delivers a very finely judged performance, and does not overact. Carmelita Geraghty is very convincing in her downward spiral into immorality, selfishness, and selling herself for fame and fortune. The film is not particularly creaky with age, and is well worth seeing.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by this film. It's true that little of the Hitchcock we've come to love comes through but there are quite a few touches at that and all of them work. The travel scenes at Lake Como and somewhere in the South Sea work very well indeed and there's precious little in this film that doesn't contribute meaningfully to the movie. I would agree with one reviewer that Cuddles the dog gives some of the scenes humor. The transformation of two of the characters for the worst is loud and clear and the plot is not only crystal clear but quite effective. I'm glad to say I've seen this one - my last of all the Hitchcocks! Curtis Stotlar

This was Hitchcock's first ever film as director to be completed and it is indicative of his huge talent. Despite its age and therefore somewhat primitive production the young Hitch does a superb, professional and classy job. The film maintains interest throughout and is still funny, entertaining and impressive when viewed today! Hitchcock imbues it with directorial flourishes of brilliance with clever, interesting camera shots, intelligent storytelling and little bits of his psychological themes which strengthen all his films.

In conclusion this is a superb film considering its age and the fact it is Hitchcock's debut.

Looking at Hitchcock's early pictures, one struggles to see signs of his genius, like looking through every manger for the baby with the halo. But this, the first complete Hitchcock movie, shows no signs of his future greatness. He is clearly a journeyman director, some one who shows promise, but sent to Berlin for his final exam.

On the plus side, this movie starts off surprisingly well, with a snappy, American-paced, chorines-on-the-town plot. If they had cast Marion Davies and Marie Prevost in this, it would be typical, if rather underwritten. The start moves fast, plot points pop up, and suddenly we take a turn and the story descends into melodrama.

Fairly typical of Hitchcock, you might say and you would be right, but he hasn't got any sense of what his chosen symbols are -- both leads are brunettes, which will come as a surprise to anyone who knows Hitchcock's taste for icy blondes. The symbolic items are standard and not particularly shocking -- Virginia Valli's wedding-bed deflowering is indicated by an apple with a large chunk bitten out of it -- and the actors are not really up to their jobs.

Hitchcock was never a great director of actors but a great director of scenes. By 1927 his visual flair got his bosses to invest in great actors for his pictures, starting with Ivor Novello for THE LODGER. But here, everyone is.... at best, adequate, with Miles Mander very stagy and whoever plays his native lover -- still miscredited in the IMDb as Nita Naldi -- seemingly brain-damaged.

There are a couple of interestingly composed visual glosses: the door that Mander must go through looks like a Turkish harem door and the decoration on either side differs dramatically; on one side is life, on another death. But this is UFA, with great cameramen and all the technicians who made great expressionist fare like CALIGARI and modernist masterpieces like Lang's work ready and eager to work.... and there's none of that here.

I find it hard to give this an exact rating: the great start is sunk by the foolishness of the ending, and Hitchcock at the the start of his career is not the film maker he would be in another thirty years -- or four. But it is Hitchcock, and therefore demands our attention, so I'll give it a good mark for that.

But if it weren't Hitchcock's first film, no one would care. It probably wouldn't even still be in existence.