Young and Innocent

Nuori ja viaton / Ung och oskyldig. GB 1937. PC: Gaumont British Picture Corporation. P: Edward Black. D: Alfred Hitchcock. SC: Charles Bennett, Edwin Greenwood, Anthony Armstrong - dialogue: Gerald Savory - based on the novel A Shilling for Candles (1936) by Josephine Tey. DP: Bernard Knowles. AD: Alfred Junge. M: Louis Levy. ED: Charles Frend. CAST: Nova Pilbeam (Erica Burgoyne), Derrick De Marney (Robert Tisdall), Percy Marmont (Col. Burgoyne), Edward Rigby (Old Will), Mary Clare (Erica's Aunt), John Longden (Det. Insp. Kent), George Curzon (Guy), Basil Radford (Erica's Uncle). 80 min. A fine 1989 print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 10 Dec 2008. - Fine definition. - Revisited the first half an hour of a delicious less-known Alfred Hitchcock movie. - The quarrel of the married couple. The jealousy of the husband to his star actress wife. The thunderstorm at the coast. The blinking of the eye. The woman's corpse thrown by the waves to the beach. The scream of the women and the seagulls. The headlines. - The innocently suspected man gets an incompetent lawyer and escapes to defend himself, and reluctantly the police chief's daughter comes to help him. - Relaxed humoristic observations in a film that is not too tightly strung. This was an age when hurry was not ubiquitous, and there were still personalities around. - Heikki Nyman asks whether this film is a thriller at all, and prefers Lesley Brill's characterization of a "comic romance of false accusation". - I like the setpieces (the mine, the mill, the children's party) of this rambling film.