“In our world we do not understand this code of easy virtue.”
“In your world you understand very little of anything, Mrs. Whittaker.”

There’s not a lot to recommend with this early Hitchcock. It’s not a movie he was overly proud of, the available prints are in tatters, and there’s nary a touch of Hitchcock’s style to be seen. It’s interesting in that it’s another of his movies in an unexpected genre, but I frankly even wondered whether to include it in this marathon viewing of his work (there isn’t really an “official” DVD available, just various mountings, including in the Internet Archive, of very shoddy public domain prints).

There’s some interesting class stuff in the dialogue (some of which like, “In order to prevent a scandal we must act as if nothing unusual happened,” kind of reminded me of “The Age of Innocence”), and a spectacularly melodramatic ending (the scandalous heroine emerges from a courtroom to a volley of paparazzi: “Shoot!” she tells them, “There’s nothing left to kill!”) which Hitchcock himself was positively ashamed of but for me actually gave the movie some (albeit absurd) emotional punch. But if you’re trying to keep your Hitchcock collection trim, this is one of the first you can feel comfortable leaving out.

Tags: adaptation, Hitchcock, silent

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