You won't be disappointed!

Touches You

Thanks for the memories!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Producer: Edward Black. A Gaumont British Production, made at Pinewood Studios, England. Copyright 30 January 1938 by Gaumont British Picture Corp. of America. New York opening at the Criterion: 10 February 1938. U.S. release: 17 February 1938. U.K. release (through General Film Distributors): December 1937. Australian release (through G-B-D): December 1937. Running times: 84 minutes (U.K. and Australia); 70 minutes (USA). U.S. release title: The GIRL WAS YOUNG. COMMENT: A dazzling inventive and seductively entertaining thriller, outstandingly exciting in its direction from the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. Of course it is in the action scenes that Hitch really comes into his own: the nimbly edited escape from the court- house in which de Marney amusingly finds himself a spectator at his own trial; the fight at Tom's Hat and the flight from the old mill; the amazingly effective juxtaposition of real people with skilfully crafted models and miniatures in the escape from the doss-house episode; the hair-raising plunge through the mine shaft; all capped by that enormous crane shot through the Grand Hotel, from the foyer through the crowded ball-room to a shattering close-up of the killer's twitching eyes.Not that Hitchcock is a slacker in the movie's less sensational sequences. There is a delicious sense of irony, both in the writing and the visuals, that runs through the entire movie. A captivating performance from Nova Pilbeam helps enormously too. Naturally she receives deft assistance from a fine roster of character players, led by Edward Rigby's superannuated tramp and J.H. Roberts' engagingly muddle-sighted solicitor.A bouncy music score, fine photography and eye-catching art direction further add to the total enjoyment of a very cleverly scripted, agreeably twisting and turning yarn.MY SECOND VIEWING: The work of no less than six writers has removed this movie a long way from Josephine Tey's "A Shilling for Six Candles". In fact it now hardly resembles the novel at all. Never mind, the result is a wonderfully taut and suspenseful, yet humorous and charmingly romantic thriller in which the hero's efforts to extricate himself from a murder rap get not only progressively more complicated and deeper into dutch, but take in a number of excitingly hairs- breadth escapes as well. True, the hero is perhaps a little wet and not at all your average macho type, but I found this to be a most agreeable novelty. Also out of the rut are some great character cameos including Edward Rigby as an ingratiatingly seedy old china-mender, Torin Thatcher as a brusquely suspicious doss-house keeper, J.H. Roberts as a not-so- soothingly "eagle"-eyed solicitor and of course the guy who plays the real murderer. Heroine Nova Pilbeam figures as a real charmer, although for a while there it looks like she's going to spend most of the action in the one costume. Fortunately she is allowed a couple of changes in the final reels. Hitchcock's mastery of staging suspense is always in evidence, and here he draws upon the expertise of a fine technical crew including art director Alfred Junge (I love his deserted water- mill), lighting cameraman Bernard Knowles (who doesn't put so much as a focus inch wrong in the climactic, justly celebrated crane shot), and film editor Charles Frend (whose scissoring throughout is a model of crispy smooth silkiness). A foot-tapping, jazzy music score too. In all, essential viewing for Hitchcock fans and marvelously enjoyable entertainment for cinema fans in general.

As this film opens we see a couple arguing in a seaside house; the next morning the woman is found dead on the tide line with a raincoat belt nearby. Her body is discovered by Robert Tisdall who runs to alert the authorities; he is witnessed by two women who assume he is the fleeing killer. He is later arrested when it emerges that he knew the woman and she'd left him a considerable sum of money in her will. He manages to escape from custody and while the police are searching for him he meets Erica Burgoyne, the daughter of the chief constable, and after some time persuades her to help him find his own raincoat and thus prove his innocence. It won't be easy though as it was stolen and was last seen being worn by a tramp!This is an interesting early Hitchcock film; there was no real mystery as the identity of the killer is very strongly implied at the start and we see that Robert did find the body as he claimed. That doesn't matter though as the film is all about how he will prove his innocence. Derrick De Marney puts in a solid performance as the wrongly accused Robert and Nova Pilbeam is a delight as Erica; the two of them have a good chemistry. The rest of the cast are solid too. While this isn't a comedy there are plenty of laughs to be had; these are gentle and unforced so don't feel out of place. There is a scene where our protagonists drive into a disused mine working and the ground collapses under their car; I was surprised at just how good this scene looked given that the film will be eighty years old this year. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to Hitchcock fans and people looking for a good drama with no really offensive content.

Sandwiched between "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes", "Young and Innocent" is an oft neglected thriller by Alfred Hitchcock. Released in 1937, the film stars Derrick De Marney as Robert Tisdall, a struggling screenwriter who is wrongly accused of a crime. On the run from the police, Tisdall sets off to both prove his innocence and locate the film's true culprit.It's a familiar Hitchcockian plot, but "Young and Innocent" nevertheless contains a number of excellent moments. These include an elaborate, now famous crane shot, and an audacious cutaway to a flock of birds, angrily screaming as a corpse tumbles into view.Bizarrely, Hitchcock paints Tisdall as a man who, though innocent of murder, nevertheless feigns innocence in order to win the heart of a naive teenager (directors Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol would flat-out label Tisdall a "weasel" and "male gigolo"!). In this way the film's title has a double meaning: Tisdall, innocent of crime, but unscrupulous enough to prey upon the genuinely young and innocent. 7.5/10 – Worth one viewing.

Following the classic Hitchcock themes that he was well known for in "The 39 Steps" and his later works, "Young and Innocent" is a well made movie with strong tension, great characters, exciting premise built up terrifically within the opening minutes and is an exciting adventure of a wrongly accused man attempting to his clear his name from wrongdoings. Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney are absolutely terrific in the lead roles, having great chemistry back and forth, a romance story that is both interesting and necessary and a script that easily allows them to convey their thoughts. It is said that this is indeed Hitchcock's favourite British film and whilst this is a little far stretched, it is to me, one of his most exciting and overlooked films.