"Downhill" Review

 

by Daniel White

Ivor Novello and Alfred Hitchcock's next and final film after The Lodger is Downhill, a 1927 silent melodrama about a British lad and his descent from boarding school rugby hero to derelict on the docks of Marseille. Based on a play Novello co-wrote with famed English actress Constance Collier, the movie is an assured piece of filmmaking by the young Hitchcock. In only his fourth outing as a director, he is an accomplished technician, and it's a worthy companion-piece to the more familiar, The Lodger.

Unlike that flick, where Novello's nameless title character is a cypher, a symbol for the Other, in Downhill he gets to inhabit an actual bloke. Roddy Berwick may be a tad too good to be true (and Novello a tad too old to be playing him), but he is real, making his fall from grace both moving and pitiful.

Berwick is a wealthy student at an unnamed exclusive public school. His best pal is Tim Wakeley (Robert Irvine), a parson's son attending the institution on scholarship. Tim introduces Roddy to Mabel (the talented Annette Benson), a waitress at the school. The boys visit the seemingly convivial young lady at a candy shop where she also works, dancing and carrying on in the back room (her favorite record is "I Want Some Money" (Uh oh). The jolly threesome are jolted into reality when Mabel announces she's preggers and fingers the well-heeled Roddy as the daddy. In an effective scene, Hitchcock films the scheming shop girl's face in extreme close-up while she describes to the head master what has transpired and what she wants from the confused, innocent boy.

Unwilling to see his friend lose his scholarship, Roddy takes the blame for Mabel's mishap and is promptly expelled from school. Returning home, his father rejects him, refusing to believe he is not guilty. Tossed into the streets, the hapless young man begins his perilous journey to debauchery and ruin.

I really enjoyed this movie, and if it wasn't for Ivor Novello, I would not have acquainted myself with two of Hitchcock's silent films, having very little interest in this period in the director's career. And yes the movie is obvious at times, with Hitchcock repeatedly showing Novello traveling downward. First on an escalator then an elevator, and finally into the hull of a ship. But there is an artless charm to his wielding the metaphor like a cinematic sledgehammer. He is a clever young man playing with a fascinating toy full of endless possibilities. Allow him this opportunity to explore and experiment.

Watching the film I wondered how much of the movie could be traced back to Novello's play and what aspects of the story did Hitchcock contribute (the "scenario" is by Eliot Stannard, a frequent collaborator on the director's silent flicks).

The deceitful Mabel reminded me of Farley Granger's calculating wife in Strangers on a Train (1951). And Roddy's downfall is made complete by his encounter with a devious actress (Isabel Jeans) who marries the unsuspecting youth after he inherits a considerable sum of money. Defrauded of his newfound wealth, he is forced to work as a taxi dancer, a gigolo, dependent on the generosity of older, rich matrons.

Is the athletic, charming, honorable, Roddy Berwick a fantasy that Novello idealized, perhaps yearned for? Is the rejection by the father something that he experienced? Again, speculation. However, whatever the source for the ending, in which the destroyed young man returns home, to be warmly embraced by a contrite father, it is heartfelt and touching.

The disparate mixture of Alfred Hitchcock's cynicism and Ivor Novello's sentimentality in Downhill proves to be a successful combination. It results in an entertaining, well-made movie that should no longer linger in the shadow of The Lodger.

With Ian Hunter as a smarmy actor in cahoots with Isabel Jeans, and produced by Gainsborough Pictures, Downhill is available on YouTube, which has several different copies in prime condition.