Rich and Strange (1931)

Undescribable Perfection

How sad is this?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This couple could be the British equivalent of Ralph and Alice. Overbearing bumbling oaf and his mousy, tolerant wife. When it started I didn't think I would like it as it was so unlike a Hitchcock film. But this picture grows on you and becomes more interesting as the story develops.As other reviewers have mentioned, a shlub couple, he a dreary accountant and she a dreary housewife, come into some money and decide to spend it on the high life topped off by a world cruise. They each fall in love with a third party before realizing they were meant for each other. At least as a default position."Rich And Strange" is part romance and part comedy, and both elements are understated in the English manner. Some of the comedy parts are quite humorous and some of the romantic moments are quite touching, and the acting is solid. Henry Kendall plays the oafish husband with traces of a stage background, and Joan Barry is as sensitive and appealing as she is lovely. Percy Marmont is a stalwart Englishman with principles - but will overlook them for Ms. Barry.When it started I thought maybe a five rating, but by the end I gave it a seven. As I mentioned, it gets better, and there are some unmistakable traces of The Master. It is a valuable inclusion in the Hitchcock canon, if for no other reason than being a step stone towards Hitchcock's evolution as one of filmdom's best directors.

Lots of little moments in RICH AND STRANGE (American title) assured me that Hitchcock was gradually developing the kind of touches that became his trademark later on. His opening scenes of London bustle aboard trains and buses on a rainy day is a foreshadow of things to come in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (with its sea of umbrellas on display).These opening sequences are very modern in concept, so it's a pity the rest of the film doesn't match it in true Hitchcock style.JOAN BARRY and HENRY KENDALL are a bored, restless married couple not content to stay by the fireside after he receives a letter from an uncle who is leaving him a great deal of money. They embark on a cruise to the Orient wherein both of them get involved in ill-fated love affairs. Hitchcock tries to provide comic touches, particular with an obnoxious female passenger clumsily trying to fit into shipboard events, but frankly this aspect of the film comes across as painfully unfunny.Not until the finale, do we get a real Hitchcock moment involving a seldom glimpsed black cat that becomes part of a macabre twist aboard a junk-boat of Chinese fishermen. It's a most unappetizing moment that must have been deliberately written into the script at Hitchcock's insistence on wry black humor.But all in all, this is a clunky exercise in early filmmaking combining a tedious romantic yarn with a few amusing moments about a couple whose marriage survives despite some unlikely circumstances that almost tear them apart. The special effects of a sinking boat gradually filling with water are especially well done for the time.Summing up: For serious Hitchcock completists only.

I agree with many of the other reviewers that the value of this movie is that it gives a clue to the Hitchcock of his future movies. The camera-work, particular in the earlier part, is much above other films of that era. Some clues to the camera techniques that he used in his other 30's vintage movies, such as Sabotage, Thirty-Nine Steps are apparent here.I do disagree with those that there was no MacGuffin in this picture. Remember the scene at the theater in Paris where a bearded (obviously fake beard) man pinches her bottom. I was waiting for the man to reappear later in the film (he didn't). Also it was a little erotic diversion to a sexy woman in a dull marriage.

He was only 31 when he made this, another exercise in style and experimental and innovative in its approach to a marriage that is sinking into boredom and predictability.Highly enjoyable to this die-hard Hitchcock fan, it has a little of everything: humour, escape from the mundane, unexpected windfalls changing one's life and not necessarily for the better, extra marital affairs and little peeks at life as seen through the eyes of the protagonists.No big 2X4's but many subtleties such as the appealing discreet affair between Emily and the commander and the blatant in your face affair conducted by Fred, her husband, and the princess.Some dark bits as well, signalling Hitch's lasting fascination with the macabre, exemplified by the treatment of a pet cat.One amusing bit has some characters marching around the deck, the first all female and I do believe Hitch's cameo has him in the second all male appearance being hauled around by two athletic types.Hitch never disappoints me.6 out of 10.