Film review: Jamaica Inn (1939)

 

One of the lesser Hitchcocks, this was the last film he directed in England before coming to America.  We'd tried to watch it before, but the version (which might have been on YouTube) was so terrible that we gave up.  Well now they have most of the English Hitchcocks on the Criterion channel, so we thought we'd give it another try (it was that or re-watch Young and Innocent, which is always a good option).  It starts a bit slowly, and I don't think Hitchcock is really suited to period pieces, but it ends up being pretty damn good.  I'd definitely rank it well above I Confess or The Wrong Man or Saboteur in the Hitch rankings.  It is helped immensely by a scenery-chewing central performance from Charles Laughton as apparently buffoonish, then sinister, then evil, then batshit crazy Sir Humphrey Pengallan.  The supporting cast is pretty stellar too: Maureen (The Quiet Man) O'Hara as the plucky young Irishwoman who comes looking for her aunt at the titular inn, Leslie Banks (the baddie in The Most Dangerous Game) as her apparently wicked uncle Joss, head of a crew of murderous wreckers, who lure ships on to the rocks then kill all their crew as they struggle ashore (this is how the film opens, which is a pretty intense way to start any film), Robert Newton (who was the most famous Long John Silver in the Disney version) as the dashing undercover agent infiltrating that crew, and, in a small role, Basil Radford (who I kept confusing with Nigel Bruce), who is one of the cricket-loving pair in The Lady Vanishes.  I have to imagine that this was also a play at one point, as we bounce back and forth between about three main locations, but the sets (particularly the craggy Cornish coastline and the Inn itself) are great, the action is (as usual with Hitchcock) well-staged, and there are several good twists (although we're several steps ahead of the hero, so it's hard to respect him).  Charles Laughton's performance is so strange and eccentric (not to mention his eyebrows) that you can't take your eyes off him.  He manages to be chivalrous and cold-blooded, cool and insane, funny and chilling all at once.  It should be remembered among his great performances, if there was any justice.