Without A Hitch

Befitting Hitchcock’s status as one of the greatest directors that ever lived, there have been plenty of re-releases and box set editions of his movies in recent years. These have, perhaps not surprisingly concentrated on his later films, the master works that are “Rear Window”, “Vertigo”, “Psycho” and so on. What is surprising is that some of his very early works have never been released on DVD in this country and the only way you could get hold of them was on dodgy Region 1 bootlegs.

This new release from Network seeks to remedy this with the inclusion of two of Hitchcock’s earliest films, “The Pleasure Garden” and “Downhill”. Whilst their inclusion is admirable, it’s likely only Hitchcock obsessives will be interested in these little-seen films and most people buying this set will concentrate on the later thrillers that Hitch directed just before moving to Hollywood: his not very faithful but still brilliant adaptation of “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, the proto-Bond film “Secret Agent” and “Die Hard-on-a-train” fifty years before “Die Hard” even existed, “The Lady Vanishes”.

However, it is also fascinating to watch the very early films included here, which give us hints of what was to come. As the introduction points out, the very first shot of his very first film, “The Pleasure Garden”, features a middle-aged man ogling a line of blonde dancing girls through a pair of opera glasses, which is in many ways a perfect metaphor for Hitchcock’s entire body of work. Jack the Ripper tale “The Lodger” also introduced many Hitchcock trademarks, not least the famous cameo appearance. Hitchcock claimed much later it was the first film in which he “exercised his style” and it is certainly the most watchable of the three films from the ‘20s included here.

Inevitably the DVD extras for a collection of films made over seventy years ago are never going to be as comprehensive as one would like. Perhaps more than with any other director you wish Hitchcock was still around to do a director’s commentary, a concept he’d probably have fully embraced given his love for self-promotion and willingness to give away his tricks of the trade.