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The overture evinces what Dreyer once described as "a strong sense of the vertical," chorine after chorine racing down a spiral staircase followed by a collage of views of the stage show, girls caught between the smoky theater crew behind the curtains and the front row of tuxedoed lechers. One patron trades his monocle for a pair of binoculars in a bleary POV shot (Nabokov's oculus?) and then approaches the first of Alfred Hitchcock's blondes, who fittingly turns out to be a brunette (Virginia Valli). Her double is the raw ingénue (Carmelita Geraghty) who wanders onto the London revue and wows the boss with a cyclonic Charleston, "some real hot steps." The newcomer shoots to the top and becomes suspended between her beau (John Stuart) and a half-lidded prince (Karl Falkenberg), Valli meanwhile stays stuck on amateur hour and married to a scrawny cad with no taste for romance (Miles Mander). (The warmest exchange during their trip to Venice: "You threw away my rose!" "It had wilted.") A British-German production (one courtier is given Cesare the Somnambulist's face and hands), where the tropical plantation of the second half is as much of a world of artifice as the theatrical backdrop of the first half. Mossy intrigue jolted by delirium, by feverish characters brought back to their senses by kisses and bullets, by the phantom of the drowned native girl (the third brunette) skulking accusatorily toward the camera. Misleading façades and overlapping triangles, above all Hitchcock's conception of cinema as a spectacle consciously watched. Much of the backstage drama goes into Stage Fright while Under Capricorn takes up the betrayed relationship overseas, Secret Agent's howling pooch is here to lick the heroine's toes. With Ferdinand Martini, Florence Helminger, and Georg Schnell. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |