Rich and Strange

This early Hitchcock talkie can be seen as a transitionary film between his silent directorial efforts (The Lodger, The Manxman) and his earliest well-recieved sound films (The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Sabotage). The film features dialogue for only a relatively small fraction of the film's screentime (roughly a third or so), and is structured as a series of comedic set pieces complete with silent-styled title cards. It wasn't very popular at the time of it's release (people in the early 1930s had already grown tired of the hallmarks of silent cinema) and it isn't particularly well-remembered today either, especially since it's a romantic comedy and not Hitchock's usual genre.

Fred (Henry Kendall) and Emily (Joan Barrie) are a typical middle-class couple who feel their lives bowing under the boring routine of everyday life in London. They come into some money via a relative, and decide to leave their life behind for a while so they can travel the world. It turns out the 'happy' couple aren't really all that suited to a travelling lifestyle though - Fred gets seasick, and both he and his wife entertain thoughts of leaving one another for strangers they meet en route to the orient. Things come to a head when the cruise liner they are on is involved in a devastating mid-sea collision.

Hitchcock fans will notice the director's usual inventiveness and sense of flair in certain scenes, such as the layout of sets or the opening minutes that establish the routine and humdrum of the London middle-class via some well-choreographed crowd work. However, a lot of the film is boring and trite... Hitchcock doesn't seem all that energised by the farcial aspects of this comedy, and the plot is threadbare at best. This one's for Hitchcock completists only, and feels very much like an outdated relic of it's time.

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville (his wife), and Val Valentine. Based on a novel by Dale Collins.
KEY ACTORS: Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Betty Amann

RELATED TEXTS:
- Hitchcock made a few other early stabs at non-thriller films in the 1930s, including the dreadfully boring melodrama The Skin Game and a musical historical called Waltzes from Vienna (considered by Hitchcock to be the nadir of his career as a film director).
- Despite the many years between them, the 2003 romantic comedy Just Married has some conceptual similarities with Rich and Strange. In fact, the young-married-couple-everything-goes-wrong road trip is a well-worn trope that has formed the basis for many films over the years.