I was aware that some time after the splendid Blackmail Hitchcock was to take one more dip in the quality of his output before finally delivering the likes of The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps and moving out to Hollywood, so I was a little worried about the next few movies on his filmography. This, like Juno and the Paycock, however, is perfectly watchable, and at the least is closer to what we’d come to expect from the man.

Much of the action at the start here revolves around a jury at the trial of the woman suspected of the title’s murder. I enjoyed this in a “12 Angry Men” way, Hitchcock’s knack for drawing the characters out of a gathering showing in a big way. There are interesting uses of the theatre world much of the story occurs in, with people in costume being conversely in or out of character providing counterpoint to the proceedings. Hitchcock’s experimentation with sound continues here too with one of the first uses of voiceover, and there’s some quite startling gender and race stuff later on too. It’s all very interesting, but (I know I’ve said this a lot in these reviews so far) nothing close to his best. It’s perhaps notable also for being his only “whodunnit?”, a genre he’d later say he didn’t approve of.

Hitchcock also made a German version of this entitled “Mary” which is one of the most difficult of his works (aside from the lost ones) to find today, but like the silent version of Blackmail I felt compelled to seek it out, though I’ll only briefly review it on the same page as the original… The French critic introducing the original on the DVD I have seemed to think “Mary” was vastly different from Murder! and I’m sure I’d read the same elsewhere but I really didn’t see it. “Mary” really did strike me as mostly the exact same movie made with the actors speaking German and slightly more brisk in the editing department (it’s a few minutes shorter). Like all early Hitchcock “Mary” is worth seeing for curiosity’s sake (most people will think Hitchcock only “remade himself” once with the later Man Who Knew Too Much)… but don’t waste too much time tracking it down.

Tags: circus, gender, Hitchcock, murder

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