Hitch #1 - The Pleasure Garden (1925)

I rather love The Pleasure Garden, the plot is simplistic but the characters have vivacity and there are some wonderfully constructed scenes and sequences. The humour is pitched well and the secondary characters are given enough depth that you care about them as much as the leads. The benefit of hindsight allows me to say that can spot the hand of the master on The Pleasure Garden (Hitchcock's directorial debut)

Miles Mander's villain is a sort of early cinema, moustache-twisting cliche to the point that if the height of his villainy had happened somewhere with trains (rather than an ocean) it would have involved his mistress being strapped to a railway line.

I first saw The Pleasure Garden in 2012 at Wilton's Music Hall, in a restored version with a rather lovely live score by Daniel Patrick Cohen. I liked it even more that way!

(play on YouTube)

Lesson learned: The dog always knows best
Watched: 2014-08-22
Source: YouTube
Rating: 6/10

Hitchcock wiki
Silent London
BFI Screenonline