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Jamaica Inn (1939) Alfred Hitchcock
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Apr 16, 2011
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timelyone



Jamaica Inn (1939)

\"Jamaica Inn\" is a 1939 film made by Alfred Hitchcock adapted from Daphne du Maurier\'s 1936 novel of the same name. The film is a period piece set in Cornwall in 1819; the real Jamaica Inn still exists, and is a pub on the edge of Bodmin Moor. The score was written by Eric Fenby.\"Jamaica Inn\" starred Charles Laughton and Maureen O\'Hara (in her first film). The film garnered a large profit (3.7 million dollars, a huge success, at the time) at the box office. \"Jamaica Inn\" was the last film that Alfred Hitchcock directed in England. After this all of his films were done in the U.S.


PLOT
        Jamaica Inn is headquarters to a gang of smugglers, led by the innkeeper Joss (Leslie Banks). The smugglers extinguish coastal beacons in order to cause ships to run aground. Then they loot the wrecks and kill the surviving sailors.
          Mary (Maureen O\'Hara), the orphaned niece of Joss\'s wife Patience (Marie Ney) comes to live at the inn, and saves the life of Traherne (Robert Newton), a gang member lynched by his fellow smugglers for embezzling. Traherne is actually a secret law-officer, trying to bring down Joss\' gang. They flee the inn and seek the protection of Sir Humphrey Pengallon, the local magistrate, little knowing that that he actually protects Joss\' gang, as he needs the loot in order to maintain his lavish lifestyle.
Traherne and Mary must race against time to stop a ship from being wrecked, and an unlikely love affair blossoms.

PRODUCTION NOTES:

Charles Laughton was a co-producer as well, and he interfered greatly with Hitchcock\'s direction.

Laughton was originally cast as the uncle, but he cast himself in the role of villain, which was originally to be a hypocritical preacher, but was rewritten as a squire because unsympathetic portrayals of the clergy were forbidden by the Production Code in Hollywood.

Laughton then demanded that Hitchcock give his character, Squire Pengallon, greater screen time. This forced Hitchcock to reveal that Pengallon was a villain in league with the smugglers earlier in the film than Hitchcock had initially planned.

Laughton\'s acting was a problem point as well for Hitchcock. Laughton portrayed the Squire as having a mincing walk, to the beat of a German waltz which he played in his head while Hitchcock thought it was out of character.

Some good did come out of Laughton\'s meddling, though. He demanded that Maureen O\'Hara be given the lead after watching her screen test (her acting in the screen test was sub par, but Laughton could not forget her eyes). After filming finished, Charles Laughton brought her to Hollywood to play Esmeralda opposite his Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where she became an international star. In March 1939, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood to begin his contract with David O. Selznick, so Jamaica Inn was his last British picture, as well as one of his most successful.


SYNOPSIS

As the wind whips the Cornish Coast, a band of cutthroats scuttle ships unlucky enough to sail past the Jamaica Inn. Into this air of foreboding comes Mary, looking for her aunt Patience, the sister of her dead mother. Stranded on the road to the inn, Mary meets Sir Humphrey Pengallan, a half-mad squire who is so taken with her beauty that he offers to accompany her to the inn. Once there, Mary is greeted by a leering bully of a man, who turns out to be her uncle, Merlyn Joss. Joss is the leader of the pirates, but secretly, Sir Humphrey is the real brains of the operation, and he orders Joss to allow Mary to stay. That night, Mary watches in horror as the pirates prepare to hang Jem Trehearne, whom they suspect of pilfering their booty. As the men fight over Trehearne\'s shoe buckles, Mary cuts the rope, and the two fugitives flee into the night. Unwittingly, they turn to the squire for help. Trehearne confides that he is an undercover police officer investigating the wrecks off the coast. The squire tricks Trehearne into returning to the inn with him, and Mary, overhearing the confession, rides to warn her aunt. While the squire and Trehearne await the arrival of the mastermind, the scuttlers appear and take them prisoner. After the men leave to scuttle another ship, Trehearne is shocked as Sir Humphrey unties his own bonds and orders Patience to stand guard over Trehearne. After the squire departs, Trehearne strikes a bargain with Patience: his freedom for that of her husband. Trehearne then rides for help as Mary attempts to warn the unsuspecting ship. Enraged, the men shoot Joss as he tries to protect Mary from their wrath. She then manages to return to the inn, where she is kidnapped by the crazed squire, who carries her off to his ship. Returning with the troops in the nick of time, Trehearne captures the scuttlers and rescues Mary as the squire leaps to his death.


NY TIMES  Review of Jamaica Inn (1939) published October 12, 1939
THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; Laughton Obscures Hitchcock in \'Jamaica Inn\' at the Rivoli
By FRANK S. NUGENT
Published: October 12, 1939

Having set his own standards, Alfred Hitchcock must be judged by them; and, by them, his \"Jamaica Inn\" (at the Rivoli) is merely journeyman melodrama, good enough of its kind, but almost entirely devoid of those felicitous turns of camera phrasing, the sudden gleams of wicked humor, the diabolically casual accumulation of suspense which characterize his best pictures. Without them, Hitchcock is still a good director, imaginative and cinema-wise, but with no more individuality than a dozen others in his field and subject, like them, to the risk of having a mere actor run away with the film.

That had never happened to Hitchcock before. His pictures always were his. But \"Jamaica Inn\" will not be remembered as a Hitchcock picture, but as a Charles Laughton picture. It bears the Laughton stamp as unmistakably as \"The Thirty-nine Steps\" bore Hitch\'s. Perhaps that is the root of the evil, if it is an evil. For Hitch never faced a player his size before (and we\'re not thinking only of gross tonnage). With two such stalwart individualists battling on a bare sound stage they might have come to a draw. But Laughton had more than weight on his side: he is co-owner of the producing firm, Mayflower Productions, and in the film he wears costume and a putty nose. No director can spot Mr. Laughton a putty nose and still hope to lead him by it.

With Laughton setting the pace then, which is jolly enough, though slower than Hitch would have ordered it, \"Jamaica Inn\" has become a pardonably free translation of Daphne Du Maurier\'s romantic novel about the disreputable tavern on the Cornish coast in the eighteenth century where an innocent country girl, seeking her Aunt Patience, found herself in a den of ship-wreckers and murderers led by her uncle under the secret patronage of the local squire, Sir Humphrey Pengallan. The unmasking of the squire (who loves nice things—and never lets us forget the strain of insanity in the Pengallan breed) is a matter less of suspense than of straightforward narration, but the tale-spinning has been glib and picturesque.

Mr. Laughton\'s relish of the squire—it was a clergyman in the novel, but no matter—is infectious. Conscious as we were that he was overplaying him unashamedly, there is that to Mr. Laughton\'s ogling, lip-pursing, strutting, nostril-dilating style which makes the offense altogether endearing. We can\'t recall when we\'ve ever held a monster in such complete affection. But, of course, Mr. Laughton\'s Laughtonism has slowed things down. He is such a bulky man to get into motion. We had the impression, as the film rolled on, of Hitch rushing the action to his doorstep and then having to wait three or four minutes for Laughton to answer the bell. Actually, the wait must have told more on Hitch than it did on us.

There are other virtues. Maureen O\'Hara, who is lovely, has played Mary Yellen well this side of ingenue hysteria, with charming naturalness and poise, with even a trace of self-control in her screams. Leslie Banks is capital as Joss Merlyn, the wrecker ringleader, with a fine crew of cutthroats around him—Emlyn Williams, Wylie Watson, Edwin Greenwood among them. Marie Ney as the girl\'s aunt, Robert Newton as the undercover man, George Curzon as one of Sir Humphrey\'s blanker friends are splendid in their degree. We enjoyed it all, Mr. Laughton most, but it doesn\'t seem like Hitchcock.


JAMAICA INN, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier; screen play by Sidney Gilliat and Joan Harrison; dialogue by Mr. Gilliat; continuity by Alma Reville, with additional dialogue by J. B. Priestly; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; produced by Mayflower Pictures. At the Rivoli.
Sir Humphrey Pengallan . . . . . Charles Laughton
Mary Yellen . . . . . Maureen O\'Hara
Joss Merlyn . . . . . Leslie Banks
Harry the Pedlar . . . . . Emlyn Williams
Jem Trehearne . . . . . Robert Newton
Patience Merlyn . . . . . Marie Ney
Salvation Watkins . . . . . Wylie Watson
Sea Lawyer Sydney . . . . . Morland Graham
Dandy . . . . . Edwin Greenwood
Thomas . . . . . Mervyn Johns
The Boy . . . . . Stephen Haggard
Butler . . . . . Horace Hodges
Groom . . . . . Hay Petrie
Agent . . . . . Frederick Piper
Tenants . . . . . Herbert Lomas
Clare Greet
Sir Humphrey\'s Friends . . . . . Jeanne de Casalis
Bromley Davenport
Mabel Terry Lewis
George Curzon
Basil Redford

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