That’s the most modern feeling silent film I’ve ever seen. Then again, Hitchcock helped define the modern thriller, so that’s not entirely surprising. I was particularly interested in the dialogue cards, which broke away from the static ones I’m used to. It made me wonder what we’d have seen if sound had never come to cinema. Probably just subtitles, but man, Hitchcock was being really inventive here and it might well have gone somewhere.

Anyhow, the movie! It’s solid; if I didn’t know Hitchcock’s tropes I expect I’d have missed the twist. The set design was Impressionistic, but I didn’t think most of the performances were, with the exception of Ivor Novello. Bit of a deus ex machina ending. 

I wonder if Alan Moore watched this before writing From Hell? I’m thinking of the maps which play such a critical part in this movie, and the sense of geography as critical to Jack the Ripper’s killings. The Hughes Brothers did before making the movie version, in any case.

Hooptober X
Progress: 9/31
Prompt: five films from Hitchcock (et al.)