Champagne

There's not much to this film of Hitch's, a bit like champagne itself but not so mirth-inducing. Maybe you already know it but he went on make better films than this – many of 'em in fact, but notwithstanding that I still find this one an enjoyable watch.

Spoilt little rich girl Betty Balfour is taught a salutary if convoluted lesson by her Wall Street father ably played by Gordon Harker on how to behave as befits the daughter of a millionaire. In this exercise he sorts out the problem of the genuineness of Betty's suitor too. Some of the sets were as flimsy as the plot (almost diaphanous!) but would have made do for the audience that would only see it the once, and some of the photography and ideas were excellent with some, like the view through the bottom of the glass re-used by Hitch years later. Gurning through a wide range of emotions Betty Balfour kept on Bouncing Back in the same manner as Squibs, her famous role, whilst Gordon Harker excelled at playing this type of role before he started parodying himself in the '30's and playing up his down to Earth voice and mannerisms. And even Claude Hulbert made a 3 second appearance on the club stairs in one of his first film roles. If nothing else, it's worth a watch for the sinister Hitchcockian twist at the very end.

All told, not a great but an interesting film with a pleasant atmosphere, but because there's so few extant it's definitely a satisfying British silent film.

For those of you used to Hitchcock mysteries, whodunits and what nots, this VERY early work will come as a big surprise. But it's not surprise that this is quite the feast for the eyes, and quite amazing to watch for it's technical details.

The plot is simple, but yet detailed. A rich socialite daughter elopes with the man she wants to marry (with quite an amazing entrance with the female character), they flee to Paris, where she finds out her rich daddy is rich no more, and suddenly, she must face the glamourous 1920's world from a very different perspective..

Hitchcock fills the screen with a lot of details in this one, and one quite marvels at all the amazing camerawork going on. The special effects and finally the COSTUMES (!) are quite incredible as well. A cool movie!

When the cork popped on "Champagne" in 1928, silent star Betty Balfour was a much bigger name than Alfred Hitchcock. Ms. Balfour was known as Britain's Mary Pickford. So, this is much more a Balfour flick than a Hitchcock. The director called it "Dreadful" (he was never happy filming a "star vehicle"). This was a transatlantic-themed film, seeking to broaden Balfour's popularity; but, she never "went Hollywood", and was stalled by sound. Balfour and French boyfriend Jean Bradin gain some mileage out of getting tipsy on an Atlantic cruise ship. Hitchcock gets in a few interesting shots. The sequences following Balfour going to get a job as a toothpaste model, but finding men more interested in her legs than her teeth, kick it up a notch. Nothing too revolutionary.

***** Champagne (8/20/28) Alfred Hitchcock ~ Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, Gordon Harker, Theo von Alten

Hitchcock was one of cinema's most aggressively experimental film makers, a fact largely unnoticed because, first, he worked largely in known genres rather than straight drama, and also because many of his experiments worked so well, they were adopted everywhere as conventions of film making. But when his experiments fail, they scream out for attention.

Champagne is one of the latter, pretty much a failure in terms of everything but the camera work. The main story is the the main problem. There's nothing about the characters' little problem here - and it's a very little problem when you think about it - that would lead us to grow concerned about their resolution to it. That gives us an unfortunate opportunity to ask whether we actually find the characters appealing - and we don't. The father is vile, his friend is vile, the lover is an airhead, the daughter is an airhead. So we're left with more than an hour of vile airheads trying to determine what virtue among the wealthy might be. As if they could possibly know.

Strong, intelligent women do not make much of an appearance in Hitchcock's silent films; the young Hitchcock had an ambiguous attitude towards women, whom he frequently presented as both victims of male cruelty and simpering imbeciles. That's very much in evidence here.

And Hitchcock struggled artistically with what may have been a real personality problem his whole life - the one word that can link all of his films is 'paranoia.' No one can be fully trusted in a Hitchcock film, making his world a treacherous place, even in his 'comedies' - the real "Trouble with Harry" (in that film) is not that he's dead, but that nobody gives a dam' that he is.

This paranoia informs this supposed comedy throughout, as well, and in fact defines its experimental nature - Hitchcock repeatedly paints his characters with ominous shadings, setting up scenes of potential violence, potential madness, potential rape; fortunately none of which ever happens - but we're supposed to laugh at this?! My sense is that this was the question Hitchcock wanted to raise, that's the experiment going on here. But nobody really wants that question raised, answering it doesn't give us a very good time.

Lesser Hitchcock, to be sure.

The recent BFI restoration of the Hitchcock silents brought to light the unhappy truth that the negative of "Champagne" held in the National Archive -- which on research proved to be the ultimate source of every other surviving print around the world -- is explicitly labelled as the studio's 'second negative', in other words a substandard back-up copy assembled from the shots that weren't quite good enough for the distribution print. The digitally restored version looks good, and some improvements have been made where shots were obviously spliced out of sequence, but since we now know that there are specific problems in this negative with poor editing/pacing (e.g. shots being held a little too long) and the use of reaction shots that didn't originally make the grade, it's hard to be sure how many of the film's issues are due to this fact and how many to an actually weak storyline. Given that the major problems are the complaint that the film seems to drag and that characters' reactions just don't seem to make sense, I'm afraid that "Champagne" as originally released may well have been substantially superior to the only version that we will ever be able to see :-(

This was apparently a case of a film where the title and star were decided upon in advance, and then a scenario had to be constructed around them! Hitchcock's original plan was for a rags-to-riches-to rags plot (as opposed to the riches-to-rags-to-riches version ultimately used) in which a girl working at a rural champagne plant would go up to Paris and see for herself how the drink fuelled dissipated night-life, only to return disgusted to her poor but honest job. However, it was felt that the great British public would much prefer to see glamour celebrated on the screen rather than have their illusions popped -- cinema was an escapist medium for those whose life was hard -- and so a completely different scenario was developed. (It is interesting to wonder, however, how much of the cabaret sequence derives from this original concept.)

Like most of Hitchcock's early films, this is not a typical "Hitchcock" production -- the director was expected to do his job as paid by the studio rather than provide his own material -- and is of interest to those who enjoy films of the era rather than to those who are looking for traces of "The Master of Suspense". Betty Balfour is the quintessential Twenties Girl here: wilful and bubbly with a Cupid's-bow pout, cropped curls and the ambition to dictate her own life rather than acquiesce to the plans of the male half of the population. The plot is thin and in places rather contrived, but as this is by no means rare in comedies of the period (or later ones...) I think the problem is with the handling of the material rather than with the storyline per se.

The beginning is good (I particularly liked the description of the young man as a 'cake-hound'. a wonderfully period insult), and the wordless comedy of sea-sickness is very well handled without being merely crude: I love the way the Boy veers between outraged determination to confront his supposed rival and qualms from his uncertain stomach.

The concept of forcing the spoilt flapper to fend for herself (echoing Buster Keaton's hapless couple on board the "Navigator") is obviously intended as a major comedy hook for the plot, although it's not played intensively for laughs. I have to say that this is the first time I've ever seen a director actually get comic business out of the actual process of cooking (as opposed to simply miming that the rock-cakes are rock-hard) and did wonder if it reflected an impressive degree of domestication on Mr Hitchcock's (or Mr Stannard's) part!

The main problem with the film is I think the cabaret sequence, and I do wonder if this is a left-over from the original scenario. Instead of developing the comedy inherent in a girl who 'makes a mess of everything she gets her hands on' (including the back of her lover's jacket...!) looking for a job, we are plunged into what turns out to be a rather confusing and portentous sequence of events, as her 'job' at the cabaret seems to get forgotten in favour of sexual innuendo: the prostitutes, the lesbians, the would-be rapist... The plot becomes muddled (not helped by what turns out to be an interpolated dream/nightmare sequence) and ends up with the girl running off to throw herself on the mercy of a man she has previously -- and soon again subsequently -- seemed to be afraid of. Considered dispassionately, much of this section seems to be a digression that neither develops the comedy nor furthers the plot mechanics (although it is probably the most 'Hitchcockian' part of the picture!)

Having contorted the characters into the required situation to create the final comic set-up -- the showdown of mistaken intentions on board the returning liner -- the film concludes fairly happily with some genuine laughter through unforced farce. The acting is by and large good -- save for those moments when it is simply totally confusing! -- and the basic plot is a promising set-up for a typical light comedy of the period, complete with showy costumes for the leading lady and a hint of slapstick. The pacing is just a bit off; and, knowing what we now know, I do wonder if there is missing material -- intertitles, for instance! -- or even excess shots where alternate takes/ideas were *both* included in the compiled negative for a decision at some future point...