Alfred Hitchcock gets more psychologically complex for his fourth silent film, “Downhill” (1927), and whether that’s a perk or a bug will depend on the viewer. As with many silent films when viewed today, the accompanying score – entirely on piano in this case – is a massive reason for its watchability. Unfortunately, a credit for the pianist of the 2012 restoration (airing on HBO Max) can’t be found.
Thanks to the piano and the expressively bedraggled performance by Ivor Novello (“The Lodger”) – a co-writer with Constance Collier of the play on which “Downhill” is based – the movie is easy to follow emotionally. Novello’s Roddy is beat down by three acts’ worth of people taking advantage of him.
Perhaps because of the piano and the much more leisurely pace compared to Hitch’s previous films – not to mention some positive twists for Roddy here and there — “Downhill” isn’t overly fatalistic, instead coming off as a grand old accessible fable.
“Downhill” (1927)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Constance Collier, Ivor Novello, Eliot Stannard
Stars: Ivor Novello, Annette Benson, Isabel Jeans
Some details are so hard to grasp, though, that I paused the film and checked the Wikipedia description. In the first act, Roddy is expelled from his posh prep school for … some reason. We see he and friend Tim (Robin Irvine) dancing with Mabel (Annette Benson) in her convenience store after hours. Is this “Footloose” a half-century early? Is he expelled for dancing? Something odd happens with the register; is he expelled for being accused of theft? (SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
CliffsNotes needed
Wikipedia tells me he is expelled due to Mabel accusing him of impregnating her. In reality, it was Tim, but Roddy won’t rat on his friend. That clarification leads to another question of why Mabel would finger Roddy; one theory I have is that she’ll get money out of Roddy’s family, whereas Tim’s family is poor. Regardless, it’s a stark illustration of how colleges’ policies of withholding due process from the accused is by no means a recent development.
The second- and third-act moments of confusion don’t land with as much “What the hell just happened?” extremity, instead inviting a viewer to absorb with some shock the creative ways people manipulate and discard Roddy. Stage actress Julia (Isabel Jeans) marries Roddy for his money (he has come into 30K pounds from an offscreen godmother) and drains him of it.
Then a dance-hall madam (Barbara Gott) fires Roddy. I picked up an implication that Roddy is working as a prostitute in addition to being a paid dance partner. He’s fired when he won’t service a sinister-looking woman (Violet Farebrother) who struck me as being transgender, but there’s no indication of this in my online research.
This surprising thread shows how handsome but poor men could sink low enough to have similar issues to women in that situation in the 1920s. The women in “The Pleasure Garden” are presented as products to be acquired, too, but they know how to better their situation with their own manipulations and schemes.
The tragedy of Roddy is that he’s a nice guy who puts his trust in the wrong people. Yet the string of disappointments don’t shatter his own decency – even though I expected it might after his father Sir Thomas (Norman McKinnel) boots him out of the house upon the expulsion. (Until the end, it’s ambiguous whether Thomas discards his son because Roddy no longer has social value to him, or whether his trust in the institution is so thorough that it outstrips trust in his own son.)
A preview of ‘I Confess’
“Downhill’s” message might be that it’s good to hold on to trust in humanity even when nearly all the evidence suggests you should not. Off screen, it turns out Roddy’s dad has continued to love him and has been searching for him. The day he kicked Roddy out of the house was not indicative of his true nature; it was just a bad day.
Like most films by Hitchcock – who worked in a censorial era – this one has a happy ending. While a happy ending to a fatalistic film called “Downhill” might appear unearned, I have to admit it gave me a good feeling (which is of course the intent).
I might’ve liked to see more people on Roddy’s side – Tim’s sister Sybil (Sybil Rhoda) is a potential ally early on, but then she disappears from the narrative. And it’s odd that Roddy never shows any agency. In a delirious dream sequence as he’s being shipped back to London by shady merchants hoping for a reward, he pictures the people who have wronged him pointing at him and laughing. He gets angry, but this is not a spark toward righteous revenge, it’s a spark toward further delirium.
Still, Hitchcock’s and the writers’ point about the vulnerability of naïve nice guys is well taken. With “Downhill,” Hitchcock delivers a prototype for “I Confess,” except with an appreciation for Roddy’s individualistic sense of loyalty rather than a Catholic-church-promoted commitment to the confessional seal.
It’s unfortunate that Roddy comes off as a ragdoll who is tossed around rather than someone with the slightest inclination to stand up for himself. Then again, maybe he’s a cautionary tale. Either way, “Downhill” got me thinking.
RFMC’s Alfred Hitchcock series reviews works by the Master of Suspense, plus remakes and source material. Click here to visit our Hitchcock Zone.