Dvd/150

For someone who enjoys films, I don't blog about them much do I?  Shall I have a new discipline?  I shall watch the films I have on dvd and do a 150 word review of them... maybe that way I will convince myself whether I want to keep them!

First one off the rank?  THE PLEASURE GARDEN (Alfred Hitchcock, 1925)

THE PLEASURE GARDEN marked Hitchcock's directorial debut and before it spirals into melodrama in Johnny Foreigner-land, he tells it's backstage story well.  It's like SHOWGIRLS.  Only better.

Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty - I'm a film buff and even I hadn't heard of them - star as chorus-girls at the titular music hall.  Valli is a good-hearted dancer who helps down-at-heel Geraghty to audition for the chorus only to watch her become a selfish diva, dumping her honest Joe boyfriend for high society.

Valli falls for the boyfriend's best friend (deliciously cruel Miles Mander) and they marry just in time before both men leave for their overseas postings.  What Valli doesn't know - but in Hitchcockian style we do - is that he is a dissolute sadist with a native mistress.

Future Hitchcock motifs - murder, suspicion within marriage, the innocent in-too-deep - appear here for the first time.

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf!