L'homme de l'île de Man

This beautiful film is Alfred Hitchcock's last silent creation. Truly wonderful, this is a bit of a thought piece as the characters struggle with the moral dilemmas inherent in the plot. Should one stay loyal to a friend's trust or choose personal happiness at the expense of another's? Is status and appearance worth the sacrifice? Can love be forced or forgotten? This is a film that leaves you twisted and thoughtful. The actors, particularly Carl Brisson and Anny Ondra, are all wonderfully expressive. Words aren't needed to know what they are saying and what they are feeling. Miss Ondra was ethereally beautiful and heartbreakingly convincing as Kate. Very highly recommend for all true Hitchcock fans and a must for the connoisseur of the silent genre.

I was pleased with this. I'm a great fan of Hitchcock, but I've not seen many of the early films. This one did not disappoint. It is the sad eternal triangle. It's a time when a man's oath to his best friend supersedes all, even if it means giving up the woman he truly loves. The young lady in question is of the lower classes and beautiful. It would be normal for her to marry the laughing sailor. The lawyer is actually above her station. When news comes that the betrothed has died, it would be natural for her to marry the lawyer. However, he is fraught with contradictions. His father was a failure and he is in line for a judgeship. He gets her pregnant but won't fess up. The sailor returns from the sea. News of his death was incorrect. So now we have the problem. She loves the lawyer. She doesn't love the sailor. But she has given her word to wait. Instead of being honorable, the lawyer wants it both ways. It has a pretty harsh ending which I won't spoil. I thought for a film of 1929 this was pretty good.

Though it is a lesser Hitchcock, "The Manxman" has several strengths, and indeed it could have been a fine film if not for some major flaws in the story. The settings and photography are excellent, the acting is generally good, and the story's setup is believable and had possibilities.

The best part of the movie is the setting on the Isle of Man, which is done very nicely, with well-chosen settings and terrific photography. The setting is woven into the story very well, and many of the scenes are given backgrounds and props which re-emphasize the distinctive setting and/or give useful symbolism to the events in the plot. Fishing boats, an old water mill, and the island's rocky beauty are all used effectively.

The characters are presented well, and you quickly get to know them and sympathize with them. The first part of the story moves quickly, and efficiently establishes the love-triangle theme. The three leads (Carl Brisson, Anny Ondra, and Malcolm Keen) are all quite good in this part.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story is rather a disappointment, moving very slowly at times, and often painful to watch because of some notable flaws in the ways the characters act. All this really detracts from the continuing good direction and camera work. There is a very nicely conceived jump cut at one point that could have been very powerful if the story were better, and the climactic sequence does hold some real irony and suspense, but it just doesn't have the impact that it could have had. Hitchcock does his best with things, but it's too bad that he did not have a freer hand with the material, which was apparently based on a novel that for whatever reason had acquired a certain popularity at the time.

Ultimately, this movie is just average. But there are still some strengths here, and it is probably worth a look for silent film fans who especially appreciate good black-and-white photography, or for devoted Hitchcock fans who will appreciate the touches he added to an otherwise unsatisfying story.

Though immortalised for his thrillers, Alfred Hitchcock always wanted to try his hand at other genres, especially in his earlier British films. This film and 'Jamaica Inn' are two cases in point.

Above all what he wanted to do was to engage the audience with the emotions of the characters, and this he successfully achieves with what is essentially soap opera material with his usual technical mastery - such as the stern father seen from the fiancée's perspective through the glass of a window, or the girl's diary where she turns the pages and finds her true love's name gradually dominating her life. The locations are also uncommonly rich and beautiful for a Hitchcock film - more so than 'North by Northwest' or 'Vertigo' - with Cornwall very atmospherically standing in for the Isle of Man!

It was Hitch's last *total* silent ('Blackmail' came out in both sound & silent versions),and showcases the first Hitchcock blonde of sorts, pretty little Anny Ondra, whose career was sadly numbered once talkies came along - in 'Blackmail', her Swedish-accented voice was dubbed by Joan Barry.

Knowing it's Hitch, you expect a big action finale or an attempted murder of some kind, but it never happens. In terms of style I actually find Anthony Asquith's similar 'A Cottage on Dartmoor' much more exciting. But viewers should wash preconceived notions aside, and just enjoy the film for what it is.

Hitchcock's final silent film is another drama focusing on a love triangle – his primary plot basis in these early days before he became the master of suspense.

In many ways The Manxman can be seen as something of a loose remake of The Ring (1928), following a similar story of a love triangle between a man, his wife and his best friend, with similar characters and circumstances and the same lead man in Carl Brisson. However while that earlier boxing drama eventually pulled its punch (excuse the pun), The Manxman is a far harsher affair, with a ruthless disregard for its characters' fates that prefigures film noir.

As was Hitchcock's style from his earliest works, his aim here as a director is to place the audience inside the scenario, no matter how uncomfortable it makes them. The film is almost entirely composed of point-of-view shots, and an unusually large number of them in which an actor looks straight into the camera. Time and time again Carl Brisson's big innocent face stares out at us, as if implicating us in the guilt of the other two leads.

This also happens to be one of a small number of Hitchcock pictures which is very beautiful to look at. There are plenty of exquisite location shots and great use of natural lighting, in ironic counterpoint to the darkness of the story.

While not quite the best of them, The Manxman is perhaps the most confident of Hitchcock's silent pictures. Whereas the majority of his silents relied too much upon rather obvious expressionist camera techniques, The Manxman is shot much more straightforwardly, and yet it still has a smooth, flowing style and isn't cluttered up with too many title cards. For me though, Hitchcock didn't really become an interesting director until he started making talkies.