Easy Virtue (1928)

the audience applauded

So much average

Excellent but underrated film

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The main question the viewer needs to ask: Why isn't Jack living alone with his new wife? Surely no bride is going to be able to live in a house with all those people! When is she going to undress? I mean it is beyond common sense. He should have rented a place in France, then brought her home to meet the family for a few days then back out to France. Its a good silent picture by Hitchcock & the mother was very good. We need a better print. Ian Hunter was good.

Easy Virtue is one of Hitchcock's interesting but not great films, that is neither among his best or worst. Not a terrible one but this is really not the master of suspense at his best. When it comes to his silent films, Easy Virtue is perhaps one of his weaker ones, with his best being The Lodger and his weakest being Champagne. It has a lot of good things. There are some very clever shots and Hitchcockian touches like in the opening courtroom scene with everything being shot like from the perspective of the judge through his monocle and the proposal over the phone showing only the reactions of the telephone operator. Hitchcock directs very well, though there is understandably the sense that he was still finding and developing his own style. The sets and costumes are lovely to watch, while Violet Farebrother plays her role with tremendous gusto and Isabel Jeans brings a lot of charm to hers. Robin Irvine is very bland though and the rest of the acting can feel rather overheated and exaggerated even with a silent melodrama. The characters do come across as stock and somewhat cardboard, there's little dimension to them and you don't really care for them either. The story is a let down, it begins brilliant and ends just as satisfyingly but there's half-an-hour at least of tedious melodrama and staid storytelling, the romance also lacks passion and you don't ever really feel the love between them. And some have made a good point about the benefits of having dialogue instead here, I have great appreciation for silent films but Easy Virtue was the sort of film being a comedy-social drama where dialogue would have helped it come alive. Overall, not terrible, not great, mixed view here if anything. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I dosed off. There wasn't really anything in the first hour. You can skip to the last 30 minutes and get all this movie has to offer. Even then, there's not much there. Good dialog may have made something out of this mess but there wasn't any, being a silent film. I found myself sitting there wondering what was being said but there weren't any cards to tell me. I guess I was supposed to get something out of the expressions but I couldn't. Most of the cards were at the end and by then I didn't care what was being said.Apparently some woman got divorced because she got her portrait painted by some artist who disappeared after shooting her husband....or something. She's miserable with her new husband, on her new estate because the mother-in-law doesn't like her or something. Does her new hubby like her or not? Don't ask me. He doesn't seem to care either way. And neither do I.A big fat who cares to this one. 2 stars because I know there's something worse out there.

If this film had not been directed by Alfred Hitchcock, no one would remember it or even want to remember it! It is obvious that this film was just a chance for the director to work his craft until he ultimately made a dandy film a year later (THE LODGER). You will also not see very much of the "Hitchcock style" in this film, as the movie is not a suspense film or mystery and in places, his quality as a director was very suspect. It is just amazing how quickly he went from this sorry film to great films.When I say badly directed, I know some die-hard fans will no doubt have an apoplexy. I have long ago noticed that die-hard fans rarely can allow criticism of their idols, so I know I'll have a few people rate this review as "not helpful", but it simply was botched by him in places. In particular, the beginning of the film is a histrionic mess! While it is untrue that MOST silent films are overacted and have exaggerated action (this is really only something you see in very, very early films), this film looks like a throwback to bygone days during the confrontation between the evil drunken husband and the painter. Such overacting and hysterics are pretty much laughable. I also loved how the husband did such a rotten job "hitting" the other man with his cane--he pulled the blows so obviously that it just looked like it came from a high school play! Well, I must admit that the rest of the film DID feature better acting and it seemed that if Hitchcock made this movie linearly (from start to finish), then you can see how his direction improved as the film unfolded. But, unfortunately, the script is so preachy and obvious that it hardly seems worth watching. About the only positive that I really liked was the very end--the lack of a happy or clichéd ending actually helped make the movie a little more palatable. Still, all-in-all, a pretty forgettable and unimpressive film in almost every aspect.