Ivor Novello was born in 1893, meaning he was in his mid-30's when he starred in Alfred Hitchcock's
Downhill. It's always a little disturbing to see a grown man dressed in uniform playing a teenager in an English boarding school. Thank God there was no caning.
Hitchcock was a couple of years younger than Ivor. He could have played one of the children himself.
Ivor's best friend impregnates a girl who names him (Ivor) as the culprit because he has a rich father. He's expelled from school, his father throws him out of the house and he proceeds to have a more interesting life than he would have otherwise enjoyed. Which explains why they cast a guy in his 30's to play a schoolboy. It was either that or cast a teenager to eventually play an aging male escort charging by the dance in a French music hall.
Shows one advantage to silent film. The movie had a sexually active teenager's friend named as an unwed father without ever spelling it out. The intertitles only hinted at it. I don't know how open-minded British censors were back then, but that probably helped slip it past them.
110 minutes
They have a good print of it on the Criterion channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment