The Pleasure Garden

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.

The Pleasure Garden is notable for being the first complete film of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest and most influential directors in film, so it is one of great historical interest. It's not one of his best, there is somewhat of a primitive look, some of the pacing does get pedestrian in the middle and the scripting at times suffers from being overly talky. Hitchcock has definitely done worse though, and The Pleasure Garden is a decent film. Even for such an early effort, Hitchcock's direction does shine through with great use of camera angles and directorial flourishes. No signs of phoning in. The story is intelligently explored, the script serves the actors and Hitchcock competently(though of course there have been much better scripts since) and while the pacing is uneven the beginning and ending are solid enough. The acting give their all, maybe with some over-playing here and there, but there is signs of effort. All in all, a quite decent first complete film, though Hitchcock definitely went on to much better since. 7/10 Bethany Cox

'Pleasure Garden' is Alfred Hitchcock's real firs movie as a director. He directed 'Number 13' before, but that shooting was shot down and the little of the footage he managed to shoot is now declared lost. 'The Pleasure Garden' is sweet little gem and is total pleasure to watch. It doesn't feel like Hitchcock's movie and there are very little his trademarks visible (how could there be, he was just beginner director). The story is very straightforward and simple melodrama, but it is not silly. Nothing is hidden under the surface. All the elements are well put together. Besides being Hitchcock's first movie as a director, there is nothing special, but it is a sweet film that definitely deserves to be seen. Especially by the fans of the legendary director.

P.S. Alma Reville and Alfred Hitchcock got engaged during the shoot and what a couple they became.

Hitchcock's first film shows him to be merely a competent director. There's nothing Hitchcockian about this film, although a clever early shot shows a producer puffing away on a cigar next to a "No Smoking" sign, a visual contrast to show character.

The film does move along nicely and the acting is competent. Essentially a story about two show girls, one a gold digger, and the other a nice girl. The former marries into royalty and the latter makes an initial marriage mistake that makes up the bulk of the narrative.

The commercially released DVD, which I viewed, runs 59:35, but the timings here on IMDb range from 75 to 92 minutes. I was aware of a few abrupt transitions that may be due to trimmed footage, most notably the departure of Jill's husband from their honeymoon to his plantation job. Also we last see Patsy as she is selecting her trousseau for her upcoming marriage. I imagine the original film has a good deal more about how she ended up, contrasting with Jill's fortunes. It does seem unbalanced to leave her story up in the air.

All in all, an enjoyable and competently made film.

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.