The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Patsy Brand is a chorus girl at the Pleasure Garden music hall. She meets Jill Cheyne who is down on her luck and gets her a job as a dancer. Jill meets adventurer Hugh Fielding and they get engaged, but when Hugh travels out of the country, she begins to play around.

Virginia Valli ... Patsy Brand

Carmelita Geraghty ... Jill Cheyne

Miles Mander ... Levett

John Stuart ... Hugh Fielding

Ferdinand Martini ... Mr. Sidey (as Ferd Martini)

Florence Helminger ... Mrs. Sidey

Georg H. Schnell ... Oscar Hamilton (as George Snell)

Karl Falkenberg ... Prince Ivan (as C. Falkenberg)

DivX 5 / MP3

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016230/

The Pleasure Garden is the first film that Alfred Hitchcock directed to completion. It's a nice look into the earliest directorial thoughts and techniques of the master. Even in this earliest film, we can see signs of what would become some of his signature trademarks.

I enjoyed some of the point of view shots early in the film with the blurred view of the man looking through his monocle as well as the gentleman looking through the binoculars at the show girls legs. There is also a spiral staircase in the opening of this movie. Not that it was used like the staircase in Vertigo, but it made me smile thinking of how important that would be in his later film.

The story deals with the idea of infidelity. Jill (Carmelita Geraghty) is an aspiring dancer who gets engaged to Hugh (John Stuart) who has to leave for work overseas. Patsy (Virginia Valli), who has helped Jill get her start, starts to worry about Jill keeping her promise to wait for Hugh. Jill's career is taking off and she begins to fool around with other guys. Patsy marries Levett (Miles Mander), Hugh's friend who also goes overseas to work with Hugh. Unlike Jill, Patsy remains true to her husband, thinking only of being with him. She receives a letter that her husband has taken ill and scrapes up the money to go be with her husband in his time of need. When she arrives, she finds that he has taken to drinking and island women. That's when the trouble ensues.

I enjoyed Hitch's first film. It's a little slow starting, but picks up pace as it goes along. I liked seeing Cuddles, the dog, thrown in for a little comic relief to contrast the seriousness of the film, which of course is another of Hitchcock's trademarks. There was also a nice, subtle score by Lee Erwin, that fit the film well.

* Cinematographer 'Gaetano Ventimiglia' hid the camera underneath Hitchcock's bunk, in an attempt to avoid Italian duties. The unexposed film was confiscated and the crew bought new film to shoot on location, seriously depleting the film's budget. Later, the confiscated film was returned.

* Although shot in 1925, and shown to the British press in March 1926, the film wasn't actually released in the UK until after _Lodger, The (1927)_ was a massive hit.

* Michael Balcon offered the film to Hitchcock in early 1925, when Graham Cutts, Hitchcock's jealous boss would not let him work on his new film, The Rat (1925).

* Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville became engaged during the shoot.