Review: The Manxman

Set on the Isle of Man, Anny Ondra is a landlord’s daughter who is courted by fisherman Carl Brisson, but her dad warns him to stay away as he’s not good enough. Brisson sets off from the island to go abroad, and is assured that his barrister friend Malcolm Keen will take good care of Ondra. And boy does he, falling in love with Ondra himself despite their best efforts to be loyal to Brisson.

 

I wanted to see this 1929 Alfred Hitchcock (“The 39 Steps”, “Strangers on a Train”, “Vertigo”, “Psycho”) silent film mainly because the title intrigued me. I had no idea what it meant and was curious. Turns out it’s just a person from The Isle of Man, which is rather disappointing. The film’s not all that memorable, either. Scripted by Eliot Stannard (who worked on several Hitchcock silent films including “The Lodger”) from a Hall Caine novel, it’s yet another Hitchcock love triangle situation. There’s just not much plot, and little of it fresh though at least all three members of the triangle are sympathetic here. The one new-ish wrinkle here is that the poor bloke comes home rich just as the girl has fallen for the rich guy. That was clever, but the rest is been there, done that.

 

The strength here is the obvious torment that the rich man (that is the original rich guy) and the girl go through is interesting and well-acted by Anny Ondra, one of the best ‘Hitchcock Blondes’. You can’t help but feel for her, and the film would be much lesser without Ondra’s efforts. In fact, all of the other performances are pretty dreadful even taking in the era of the film and different acting styles of the time. The facial mugging is especially bad here.

 

Hitchcock’s final silent film is a middling effort with a mostly tired plot and really only Anny Ondra’s fine performance to distinguish it. Not bad, just not memorable and not even terribly creative for its time.

 

Rating: C+

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