Let's be realistic.

Dreadfully Boring

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

'Downhill' is visually inventive and astonishing, but the story is nothing more than simple flat melodrama. Script is based on the play "Down Hill" written by Constance Collier and the film's star Ivor Novello. Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello) and Tim Wakely (Robin Irvine) are best buddies attending expensive private school. Soon after both boys spend an evening with waitress (Annette Benson), she comes forward and says she's pregnant. She accuses Roddy, who comes from the rich family, being the father, while the real one is Tim. Roddy promises to keep his mouth to protect Tim, who might lose his scholarship. Roddy gets expelled from school, and thrown out at home by his father. Roddy falls deeper and deeper after being used by different people. Hitchcock fantastically depicts Roddy's descent after each dramatic episode with showing Novello's character going down on stairs, on escalators and with elevator.Not the Hitchcock's best movie - directing is marvelous, but the story is just too simple and predictable. On the other hand, it is very easy to care about the main character and despise the cruel people who but other persons through unfair grind (even when things happen thanks to Roddy's own naivety). P.S. At that time (in August, 2018) the film's theme is still relative.

During my youth in the sixties and seventies silent films were quite regularly shown on British television, but today are they are few and far between even on specialist movie channels, and are hardly ever shown on terrestrial television, perhaps because the generation that can remember the silent era are mostly dead. Many people therefore do not realise that Alfred Hitchcock made a number of silent films during the twenties; they are much less well-known than his Hollywood films of the forties, fifties and sixties, and even than the British talkies like "The Lady Vanishes" which he made in the thirties. "Downhill", recently shown on Sky Classics, is one of them, dating from 1927, towards the end of the silent era. (It was released in the same year as the first talking picture, "The Jazz Singer"). As the film opens its hero, Roddy Berwick, appears to be a fortunate young man. The son of an aristocratic family, he is School Captain at an exclusive public school. He is popular, intelligent and the school's star rugby player. His world collapses when Mabel, a waitress at a local café, announces to the headmaster that she is pregnant and that Roddy is the father. The real culprit, in fact, is Roddy's best friend Tim, but Mabel appears to have singled Roddy out because his family is wealthier than Tim's and she is hoping that she can blackmail them. Out of loyalty to his friend, however, Roddy accepts the blame and expulsion from the school. This is not the end of his misfortunes, however. He is disowned by his father, who believes him guilty of the accusation. He goes to work as an actor and marries a famous actress named Julia, but the marriage is an unhappy one and she leaves him for another man. He inherits £30,000 from a relation, but loses it all, largely due to Julia's extravagance. He becomes a gigolo in Paris, but quits this line of work in disgust and ends up penniless and starving. The theme of Mabel's pregnancy is treated very obscurely, so much so that some have misinterpreted these scenes and incorrectly concluded that Roddy is expelled on a false accusation of theft. This is because the British censors discouraged any discussion of sexual matters. Although the American Hays Office was not set up until the 1930s, its British equivalent, the British Board of Film Censors, had been established in 1912, with the result that film censorship in Britain during the twenties tended to be stricter than in America (and, indeed, than in many European countries). In later years Hitchcock was to become famous for his suspense thrillers; nearly all his Hollywood films, with "Mr and Mrs Smith" a rare exception, fall into this category. In his early British period, however, he made numerous films in other genres as well, and "Downhill" is a melodrama rather than a thriller. It does, however, show evidence of some of the techniques that were later to make him famous, particularly in films like "Spellbound" in which he could indulge his love of the surreal and dreamlike. In one scene Roddy, taken ill while on a ship, experiences a delirious nightmare. Hitchcock also makes use of shots of a descending escalator, not for any literal meaning but as a visual metaphor for Roddy's descent into misfortune, which is of course the significance of the title "Downhill". (It is strange how English and many other languages use the expression "going downhill" as a metaphor for a change in one's fortunes for the worse, even though in reality the lowlands at the foot of a hill are often a more pleasant place to be than the hilltop itself). True colour films were very rare in the twenties, but "Downhill", in common with a number of other monochrome films from the period makes use of the device of film tinting, in which different scenes are tinted in different shades. Orange is normally used for interior scenes and daytime exteriors, blue for nighttime exteriors and green for scenes set at sea and the nightmare sequences. Only a few scenes are in straightforward black-and-white. Even in my youth, most of the silent movies shown on TV were comedies. Indeed, at the time I formed the quite erroneous impression that during the silent era nobody ever made films about serious subjects and that my grandparents' generation only ever went to the cinema to laugh at the antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy. The sort of slapstick at which these comedians excelled has passed the test of time better than the serious films of the era which can look very alien today, largely because they required non-naturalistic acting techniques with which we are unfamiliar. Dialogue had to be supplied by title cards, and in "Downhill" Hitchcock keeps his use of these to a minimum. Emotion had to be conveyed through facial expression and gesture alone, something which must have appeared strange to British people in the twenties who generally believed in keeping a stiff upper lip and regarded gesticulating while talking as a foreign eccentricity. "Downhill", however, shows just how powerful silent film could be as a story-telling medium. The film's happy ending may seem sentimental today, but at the time "vice punished and virtue rewarded" was an established dramatic convention, and Roddy's misfortunes are due not to his vices but to an excess of virtue, which enables the cowardly Tim and the manipulative Julia to take advantage of his good nature. Once one gets used to the melodramatic acting techniques, one can appreciate the power of some of the performances here, especially from Ivor Novello (today better remembered as a musician and composer than as an actor) as Roddy, Annette Benson as the scheming Mabel and Isabel Jeans as Julia. The film makes compelling viewing for anyone with an interest in Hitchcock's work. 8/10

This film is based on the play by Ivor Novello and Constance Collier. Constance Collier was also an actress. Alfred Hitchcock casted Constance Collier in Rope (1948). She played Mrs. Atwater in Rope (1948).This is a Hitchcock film that influenced many of his later films. Hitchcock and Cinematographer Claude L. McDonnell used Deep Focus Photography in Downhill (1927). Hitchcock was using Deep Focus for the first time in this film. Hitchcock also used Deep Focus in some of his later films. Hitchcock's later films like Waltzes from Vienna (1934) and Rebecca (1940) are great examples.This film also has lots of Hitchcock humor in it. Peashooting scene, Fighting between Ivor Novello and Ian Hunter, and Ian Hunter sneezing at the dog toy when he falls down after the fight with Ivor Novello are some great examples.If you like Silent films, then this is a great Hitchcock Silent film. But it isn't a thriller. But an interesting drama.

With their theatre play Down Hill Ivor Novello and Constance Collier produced another lampoon dealing with British boarding school life and the layers of society it depends upon. Ivor Novello attended a school like that himself (Magdalen College, Oxford) and the theme of his play seems authentic in its unlikeliness. A school boy takes the blame for 'getting a girl into trouble' although a friend is to blame. He is expelled not only from school but also from his posh family home. Without his father's backing life quickly goes down hill. After a short career as a Paris gigolo he ends up in the slums of Marseille. Hitchcock filmed Down Hill with his typical mix of 'suspense' and humour throughout the film. The camera zooms into terrified faces, goes down hill on an escalator and an elevator and picks up every shadow and shade on its way. Apparently Hitch had the final scenes tinted in a horribly yellowish green when the protagonist feels ill. Apart from the almost unneeded final act Downhill is a downright Hitch. Its climax is the Paris night club scene where the young and inexperienced taxi dancer and gigolo is awaited by a horny elderly woman who has already compensated his services yet to be rendered.