In coastal Cornwall, England, during the early 19th Century, a young woman who's come there to visit her aunt, discovers that she's married an inkeeper who's a member of a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecking and murder for profit.
24 Nov Jamaica Inn (1939)
Piracy
Hitchcock eventually made some transcendent films. But that would be way later than this period, where he did his work as instructed and on time.
His contribution to cinema was the invention of the camera whose awareness deviated from the narrative bound in the actors. In other words, the camera sees things and goes places that the characters don’t. Sometimes it knows what they do, sometimes it drifts apart from that awareness.
This business about establishing an independent awareness between characters and viewers opens many new dimensions. But before all that, he was a hack. A competent one for sure, but a hack, and no evidence is stronger than this disaster.
It is stolen from others, other projects that happened to be sailing by. And Laughton is the character he portrays, a prancing fat gob who sucks up the flotsam from the work of others.
Posted in 2005
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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