Western Morning News (04/Mar/1931) - Another Galsworthy Film

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• article: Another Galsworthy Film
• newspaper: Western Morning News (04/Mar/1931)
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, John Galsworthy, Murder! (1930), The Skin Game (1931)

Article

Another Galsworthy Film

Mr. Galsworthy seems to be doomed to misfortune on the screen. "The Skin Game," of which a talking version has been made by Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, generally considered our best director, has met with a torrent of abuse from the critics. To my mind, the trouble is that regular fllmgoers, by which I mean both critics and public, are now so inured to the American brand of sentimentality that they not only tolerate it, but often do not even notice its presence, whereas when they are confronted with a far less treacly product by Mr. Galsworthy, they are up in arms. "The Skin Game" is certainly sentimental in a half-public school and half-theatrical manner, but compared with even really good American films, it is nowhere in the matter of slush.

Considering it dispassionately, and away from all comparative standards, I found it disappointing, not for its content, but for Mr. Hitchcock's direction. Mr. Hitchcock showed himself in "Murder" to be one of the very few directors who have mastered the art of adapting sound to the needs of the kinema, of making it part of a sequence rather than an aural illustration of it, but here he has done little but transfer a condensed form of the original play to the screen. There is something to he said for this, of course, since many people who would otherwise never have seen the play will now have the opportunity to do so, but the more sophisticated among us have been given the right to expect more by Mr. Hitchcock's own previous record.