Shameless Self Expression

School chums Ivor Novello and Robin Irvine are both taken with shop girl Annette Benson. Irvine eventually gets her pregnant, but because rugby player Novello’s family is wealthier she claims the child is his, telling the headmaster that one of his students has gotten her up the duff (which is apparently seen as an indiscretion of some sort). Novello – being a good and decent chap – takes the fall for his friend because he doesn’t want the latter to lose his scholarship and knows he won’t own up to the truth. Novello is subsequently expelled and his life falls even further apart from there.   Watching the restored 100+ minute version of this 1927 silent film from Sir Alfred Hitchcock ( “Blackmail” , “Vertigo” , “Psycho” ), I got the distinct feeling that the shorter cut for once probably would’ve worked a bit better for me. However, at any length this was never going to be one of The Master’s better films. Adapted by Eliot Stannard ( “The Pleasure Garden” , “Champagne” ) from a p

Set in the mountains of North California in the late 1800s, a family of cattle farmers battle freezing, snowy weather and an almost mythological panther that is picking off the family’s cattle. The rather unpleasant and stubborn Curt (Robert Mitchum) decides it’s high time to go in search of the panther and kill it. Beulah Bondi and Philip Tonge play the miserable family elders, with Tab Hunter, William Hopper, and Teresa Wright filling out the rest of the family. Diana Lynn plays the intended love of the family’s youngest (Hunter). Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer plays an old Native-American named Joe Sam.   Of all the films in the ‘Classic Western Collection’ DVD box set I purchased cheaply a while back (I know, no one buys DVDs anymore except me), this 1954 William A. Wellman ( “The Ox-Bow Incident” , “The High and the Mighty” ) film was one of the most highly touted and anticipated by me. I don’t know what everyone else was seeing here, this is shoddy, stagey, and dull. There’s a very