Easy Virtue (1928)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Film Review

Despite his initial reluctance to adapt one stage play (Downhill), Alfred Hitchcock was coerced  by his bosses at Gainsborough into directing another, this time a loose adaptation of Noël Coward's popular stage play Easy Virtue.  Hitchcock's mild antipathy for the project can be felt throughout the film, a passionless melodrama that shows little of the artistic flair of the Master's more inspired silent films.  Whilst it is certainly not one of the best of Hitchcock's early films, Easy Virtue is competently directed, well-acted and occasionally impresses with the odd visual flourish.  The courtroom scenes at the top and tail of the film begin with a typically Hitchcockian point-of-view shot, a judge peering through his monocle (suggesting British law is incapable of seeing the full picture).  Another, more subtle visual joke is the growth in the size of a dog accompanying the heroine on her leisurely return visit from the Rivera to England.  A static and generally humourless piece of social satire which hardly does justice to Coward's play, Easy Virtue is atypical for Hitchcock but it deals with one of his favourite themes - a person wrongly condemned for a crime he or she did not commit.  Although the film was well-received by the critics, Hitchcock was disappointed with it and this led him to walk away from Gainsborough and begin working for rival company British International Pictures, his next film being one of his silent masterpieces, The Ring (1927).

Film Synopsis

Believing that his wife Larita has been having an affair with a young artist, Aubrey Filton sues her for divorce.  The jury refuses to accept Larita's version of events, that she is entirely innocent of the charges brought against her, and decides in her husband's favour.  Her reputation ruined, Larita flees to the South of France, where she meets and falls in love with a younger man, John Whittaker.  Having married, the couple return to England so that John can introduce Larita to his family.  John's upper crust mother takes an instant dislike to his new wife and is vindicated when she discovers that Larita is a divorced woman...