À l'américaine

Even in 1928 Hitch was beginning to stand out from other directors. The camera-work and editing in this flick is outstanding. If you're a big Hitchcock fan, it will hold your interest for that aspect alone. If you're looking for great entertainment, look elsewhere.

Though there are some funny moments, most of Champagne is a bit of a snooze. The story is okay (Daddy teaches rich daughter a lesson, you'll probably guess how) but far from engaging.

The biggest problem is Betty Balfour. She's in nearly every scene and she's simply not that good. It's not a problem with the typical big-gestured silent acting but more to the fact that the emotions she portrays often don't fit the scene.

Good for a diversion and a couple of laughs but you might end up glancing at your watch before the predictable end.

This film is a real mixed bag of sorts. The film follows a woman named Betty who is in love with her rich boyfriend. However, Betty also has a substantial amount of money and Betty's father believes that her boyfriend is a gold-digger. Betty takes her father's plane and goes after her boyfriend anyway who is on a ship heading to France. Betty attempts to get married to her boyfriend but they get in an argument and separate after they reach France. After getting back together Betty's father tells her that they have lost all of their money in the stock market which causes Betty's boyfriend to leave again. Will her boyfriend return or is he really a gold-digger? The story isn't very interesting when it comes down to it although I did enjoy the twist at the end of the film.

As for the acting, it's actually pretty good. Betty Balfour plays Betty and does a stupendous job at it. She seems to fit into the role very naturally and does a good job at not exaggerating emotions like in most silent films. Gordon Harker plays Betty's father Mark and seems to do a good job at seeming unpleased with his daughter's decision. And finally Jean Bradin plays Betty's boyfriend and he also does a good job in the role. While the acting is good, it doesn't save the film.

The special effects in the film are flawed and some of them seem obvious which isn't very good at all. However, the music is stupendous here and does a great job at creating emotions which you don't normally get from films of this time period. The camera angles and shots being used are truly ahead of their time which helps the film.

Even though I praised many aspects of the film the plot just feels so basic and uninteresting plus the poor quality of the special effects really hurt the atmosphere and immersion of the film. So while it has many positives it also has many negatives which causes it to equal out to a very mediocre film. Score: 4/10

One of Alfred Hitchcock's silent-film comedies, "Champagne" is good light, bubbly entertainment, much as the title might suggest. It is very interesting to see the future Master of Suspense at work with such different material, and it's a good little film in its own right.

The story-line is very simple: a spoiled rich girl defies her powerful father to meet her boyfriend, and her father, convinced that the boyfriend is only a fortune hunter, resorts to a variety of tactics to try to break off the relationship. Meanwhile, everywhere the girl goes, the same mysterious stranger seems to pop up.

It's not much of a plot, but Hitchcock does some nice things with it. The visuals make the movie fun to watch - attractive sets, good sight gags, interesting detail. As the rich daughter, Betty Balfour is charming and is especially good in a couple of scenes where her character has to perform some unfamiliar tasks. Gordon Harker is, as always, quite funny as the father. His timing works nicely with Hitchcock's pacing.

Hitchcock's dry British wit made most of his silent comedies very pleasurable to watch. If you admire Hitchcock, or if you enjoy silent films, treat yourself to some "Champagne".

Champagne was among the last of Hitchcock's silents, and made at a period when Hollywood was already turning fast towards the talkies. Perhaps because of this, the young and naive Hitchcock appears to be cramming in as much visual technique as possible.

Right from his first picture, Hitchcock had loved the point-of-view shot. Champagne makes heavy use of what I call "extreme" point-of-view shots – that is, ones which really draw your attention to the fact that we are seeing a character's-eye-view, for example where we see the actor's hands in front of us, or the camera moves as the character walks. To this end Hitchcock even had giant props built to wave in front of the lens. There are also copious other techniques which aim to literalise the experience of the characters – for example shaking the camera around when the ship is rocking. Although the later Hitchcock would sometimes use such tricks (far more subtly) to draw the audience into the character's world, here and now it's just a bit of overt stylisation that in no way enhances the film.

Trickery for trickery's sake is often worse than useless. When Betty Balfour is told her father has lost his fortune, there is a superimposition of a room spinning. If Balfour is good enough, she could convey what is going on inside her character's head. I think I speak for most audience members when I say I would rather look at a good acting performance than a post-production special effect.

It's a pity Hitch felt he needed to dress up his shots so much, because even at this early stage he had good timing for basic point-of-view and reaction shots, allowing him to smoothly reveal intentions and opinions. His basic film grammar is good enough to keep down the number of intertitles. By the way, the difference between a picture like this and those made around the same time in the US (which tend to be very wordy) is not that the Hollywood directors were bad at visual storytelling, it's that their pictures were often full of unnecessary title cards, whereas in Europe the goal was generally to keep them to a minimum.

It's a mercy too that the acting in Champagne tends to be fairly naturalistic, the only touches of theatricality being for the sake of comedy. None of them is exceptional, but none of them is really bad either. I'm not quite convinced though by Gordon Harker as a millionaire, but perhaps this is because I'm so used to seeing him playing earthy working class types.

All else I have to say about Champagne is that it is just a bit dull – a comedy drama that is not enough of one thing or the other. A reasonable plot, a handful of good gags, but ultimately lifeless. At this point Hitchcock was really just saying, through his camera, "Look at me! I'm the director! Look what I can do!" when he should have been turning all those audience-involving techniques into gripping entertainment - as he later would.

For those of you used to Hitchcock mysteries, whodunits and what nots, this VERY early work will come as a big surprise. But it's not surprise that this is quite the feast for the eyes, and quite amazing to watch for it's technical details.

The plot is simple, but yet detailed. A rich socialite daughter elopes with the man she wants to marry (with quite an amazing entrance with the female character), they flee to Paris, where she finds out her rich daddy is rich no more, and suddenly, she must face the glamourous 1920's world from a very different perspective..

Hitchcock fills the screen with a lot of details in this one, and one quite marvels at all the amazing camerawork going on. The special effects and finally the COSTUMES (!) are quite incredible as well. A cool movie!