Film review: Young and Innocent (1937)

One of the lesser British Hitchcocks, perhaps because it's rather derivative both of The Lady Vanishes and (in particular) The 39 Steps.  As in both of those, you have a central couple who are thrown together in unfortunate circumstances, and as in 39 Steps, the man is an unjustly-accused fugitive who requires them both to go on the lam.  In this case he ("Robert Tisdall" played by an actor who deserved to become a star, both in looks and talent, Derrick De Marney) is a penniless writer, and she ("Erica Burgoyne" played by the wonderfully-named Nova Pilbeam, who was the daughter in Hitchcock's original (superior) The Man Who Knew Too Much, and who also should've gone on to great things, but dropped out of acting shortly thereafter) is the daughter of the widowed Police superintendent.  The film begins with extreme closeups of a couple having a raging argument in a storm-lashed house atop a cliff.  They are both English, but she is a Hollywood star, visiting the motherland, and he is the rotten husband she thought she'd disposed of but who refuses to acknowledge the validity of her American divorce (and who has an extreme facial tic that shall be his undoing).  She slaps him and tries to throw him out.  He looks over the cliff to the beach far below and clearly gets an idea... cut to the surf crashing on that beach in the daytime, only there's a dead woman (in bathing suit) being carried in and out in it.  Our hero is strolling along the cliff and spots her, and clambers down to try to see what's up.  On discovering the woman limp and cold he runs off to get help. Meanwhile two other female bathers are strolling down the beach and spot him running away.  A crowd gathers and the police come and somebody claims that she has been strangled, and they find a raincoat belt nearby.  The women accuse our hero of being the murderer and he can't account for his missing coat and he is dragged in for questioning.  This goes on all night and at one point he passed out with exhaustion and is revived by our heroine, who happens to be visiting the police station.  Robert is clearly taken with Erica (who is a very spunky self-sufficient type - she knows all the idiosyncrasies of her little roadster and hand-cranks it herself) and after a humorous interlude where he is introduced to his useless lawyer, who does nothing but take most of his money as an advance, he steals the lawyers glasses as a disguise and somehow stows away in said roadster as she ferries two cops out to the station as part of a search party.  The car runs out of petrol and they transfer to a pig cart (leading us to speculate if cops were always referred to as pigs), whereupon our hero makes himself known (where exactly he was hiding remains a mystery) and helps Erica push her car, charming her in the process.  He then pays for her petrol with his little remaining money.  His goal is to go back to the boarding house he was staying at and try to locate his stolen coat.  She drops him off at an abandoned mill and doesn't give him away, which is particularly hard as she returns for a meal at the family home (where she is clearly surrogate mother to her 4 snotty younger brothers, one of whom proudly produces (at the dinner table) a rat he's shot) and has to face her father, who discusses the manhunt.  Still, she returns to the mill later with food (partly motivated by the most egg-headed younger brother's insistence that what brings about the downfall of fugitives is running out of money for food) but alas, Robert throws the paper it was wrapped in out of the window and it is spotted by the two policemen.  Thus begins their shared life on the lam.  They go to the boarding house (which doubles as a tea shop for truckers) and she goes in to ask questions.  She finds out that there was a tramp with a new coat called Old Will from one of them who is told to shut up by others.  A fight breaks out and she (again, very capably) gets herself out of there, but in the meantime Robert has gone in to try to rescue her and he ends up getting his head clonked.  This is all played for laughs, including her attempt to wash the blood off in a fountain that keeps sputtering intermittently.  Their next target is Old Will, who is said to be at another boarding house miles away, but to throw her father off the scent, she decides to drop in on her aunt and uncle's house nearby.  Well, it turns out their daughter is having a birthday party and the couple get roped in.  The aunt becomes suspicious, but fortunately the uncle (Basil Radford again) helps them escape in a game of blind man's buff.  The aunt is livid, though, and calls up Erica's father.  There follows all kinds of excitement: they find Will, but alas, the belt is missing from the coat so cannot be used to prove Robert's innocence (and is in fact almost certainly the murder weapon)! the car is lost in a collapsing mine!  Erica is caught and confined to her room, as her father writes his resignation letter!  Robert springs her and finds out that a matchbook for the Grand Hotel (which he has never visited) was in the coat pocket! Will says the man who gave him the coat had a facial twitch!  all three go to the Grand Hotel to catch the villain!  gratuitous crane-shottery!  gratuitous blackface minstrelsy! gratuitous happy ending!
Check it out: I like it a lot.  If it weren't for the other two British Hitchcocks, it would be easily in my top five of his: non-stop excitement, genuinely funny moments, great acting, great drollery.