Review: Easy Virtue (1927)

Isabel Jeans is stuck in an abusive marriage with husband Franklin Dyall, who accuses her of an affair with artist Eric Bransby Williams. A violent incident occurs, someone is put on trial, and another commits suicide. The entire mess leaves Jeans divorced but branded a woman of ‘easy virtue’. Fleeing to France she falls for Robin Irvine, but eventually her sordid past and reputation threaten to derail the entire thing. Ian Hunter plays a lawyer.

 

For this 1927 film, director Alfred Hitchcock (“The Lodger”, “The 39 Steps”, “Strangers on a Train”) and screenwriter Eliot Stannard (“The Lodger”, “The Manxman”) chose to make a screen adaptation of the Noel Coward play. Mistake. This is boring, static, and the wrong choice of material for a silent film. Perhaps he might’ve gotten more out of it with sound, but as is it’s one of Hitchcock’s worst films. I haven’t any connection to the original material but I suspect this film doesn’t greatly either, because it’s far too boring and stuffy to resemble Coward all that much. Again, why take Coward’s work and make a silent film out of it? I get that it was the era, but clearly this isn’t silent film material.

 

There’s also not much evidence that The Master at work except if you take that famous quote of his about actors being cattle. Here everyone and everything feels mechanical, like pieces on a chess board. It’s all very lifeless, as though the director were only concerned with the orchestration and the photographing of things rather than story or character. To be honest, I spent much of the film wondering why Hitchcock bothered making this at all, though I did like the shot through a monocle lens. Actors Isabel Jeans and Robin Irvine are so dull you almost wish abusive husband Franklin Dyall was around more because at least he stood out, creepy as he was. It’s an entertaining, pantomime villain performance from him, but he’s out of the picture early.

 

Creaky, static Hitchcock silent film simply won’t do. The characters and story are completely uninvolving and the direction is mostly uninteresting too.  

 

Rating: C-

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