Entre a Lei e o Coração

Hitchcock's final silent, 'The Manxman', has two stars you'll see elsewhere in his films - Carl Brisson, from 'The Ring', and Anny Ondra, from 'Blackmail'. It's a tale of three friends, a promise, a search for riches, and forbidden love. Malcolm Keen plays the friend who finds his loyalties tested while he strives to make good in his chosen career of the law.

Beautifully shot and quite modern in tone, this boasts a lovely performance from Ondra, while Brisson convinces as a fisherman who trusts too much and sees too little. At times this story seems to veer towards the tragic, but has an ending which does work. The Cornish scenery which stands in for the Isle of Man is lovely, while the Hitchcock trademarks are clearly there. Well worth a look and very enjoyable.

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.

This is a lovely, lovely film set on the Isle of Man, a place unfamiliar to many. The camera swoops over the cliffs and sea to highlight the stark beauty of the landscape which is the star of the film. Don't expect the usual Hitchcock touches that were present in his later films...he developed them more fully in his very early talkies "Murder" and "Blackmail" and somewhat in his silent "The Lodger". The use of inter-titles is limited and works well. The cast here is good, Carl Brisson (who would later become the father-in-law of Rosalind Russell) and Anny Ondra who Hitchcock would use again in "Blackmail"; however, some of the plot lines are not fully developed and one rather important element is left unsaid in the story's ending. Be that as it may, if you are a fan of the Master, it's required viewing. It will fill in the history of his work and although it is atypical of his later films, it is worth the watch.

First time of watching this simple silent, and of course I like it as I wouldn't comment on (subjective of course) crap! It's a plain tale of a love triangle set on the Isle of Man, the woman (Ondra) falls in love with the best friend (Keen) of her absent husband-to-be (Brisson). Thanks to having to get round the censorship rules, you have to pay attention about 48 minutes in (out of 82 minutes running time on my tape) although it should be fairly obvious what was going to happen. As the immortal Bard, Charlie Chaplin said in The 1942 Gold Rush "Buzz Buzz Buzz". As Ondra stays dressed I can only surmise that this was the angle from which Hitch got his kicks.

And Anny Ondra is wondrous to behold, she was a real beauty who still looks modern all the way from '29 and worth the price of any DVD alone. She held my attention anyway, and whatever the outcome of the story would have been I would have been on her side!

But what she saw in either of her lovers is beyond me I'm afraid - Brisson couldn't stop laughing and Keen looked as if he'd never smiled in his life. It's not quite up to the level of Flesh and the Devil, but there's so few British silent films extant that it's well worth a look, or even just to view Hitchcock's early efforts.

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.