Film review: Murder! (1930)

An early Hitchcock, although not silent.  I'd never even heard of this one, but it's leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, so we thought we'd give it a go.  As I often find with early talkies, the pacing and structure of the film seems a bit alien, but there are some very good bits.  It begins with a couple waking up in the night to a disturbance a couple of houses down and the wife struggles into her day clothes before they both run to see what's happened.  Turns out they're part of a rather down-at-heels theater troupe and one actress appears to have killed another (the wife of the person who runs it).  She is found rather stunned with a blood-covered poker right by her alongside the corpse and an empty flask of brandy on the table.  She is put on trial, and we get to see the deliberation of the jury.  This is a good bit of Hitchcock comedic shenanigans, as each member is presented as a humorous archetype, except for the one who emerges as our protagonist, renowned actor Sir John Menier.  He is initially one of the three to vote not guilty, but is essentially brow-beaten into changing his vote, assigning the "murderer" to the gallows. He almost immediately feels regret (especially as it emerges that the accused came to see him months before and it was on his advice that she joined the theater troupe) (also the fact that she looks like this

might be a motivating factor) and is troubled by the empty brandy flask, as neither victim nor accused appears to have drunk it.  He recruits the couple we saw at the opening of the film and embarks on some amateur sleuthing.  (So it has a sort of Agatha Christie-esque feel to it, especially as they mention a play called Mousetrap.)  Memorable scenes: a policeman cross-questioning members of the troupe backstage as they come off stage or are about to go on, and you get an impression of a completely bizarre country-house farce (no doubt invented by Hitchcock), when Sir John stays in a boarding house run by the wife of a policeman they want to find out about and is overrun by her children in the morning

and the climax, which is at a circus.  That one has the most quintessentially Hitchcock camerawork and some impressive camera-effects (as well as a shocking denoument).  All in all, far from his worst!  There is a very of-its-time use of a plot device of someone being "half-caste", though, just as a heads up.  Here's Hitch's cameo: