I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Director: ALFRED HITCHCOCK. Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville. Based on the stage play by John Galsworthy. Photography: Jack Cox. Film editors: A. R. Gobbett, Rene Marrison. Art director: J.B. Maxwell. Assistant cameraman: Charles Martin. Clapper boy: Jack Cardiff. Assistant director: Frank Mills. Sound recording: Alec Murray. A British International Picture. Copyright 5 May 1931 by British International Pictures (America) Inc. New York opening at the Little Carnegie Playhouse: 19 June 1931. U.S. release through British International. U.K. release through Wardour Film Distributors: April 1931. 85 minutes. NOTES: If we exclude 1930's Elstree Calling (to which he contributed only one or two sketches), and Mary (the German version of Murder, starring Alfred Abel and Olga Tchekowa, Lotte Stein and Paul Graetz), this is Hitchcock's fourth sound film (after Blackmail, Juno and the Paycock, and Murder). Galsworthy's play was first staged in 1920. It was also filmed (as a silent) that same year with Edmund Gwenn, Helen Haye, Mary Clare (as Chloe), Malcolm Keen (as Charles), and Dawson Millward (the squire).COMMENT: Like "Murder", this is a basically a filmed stage play incorporating a great deal of experimentation with sound levels and effects. Unlike Murder, however, it has no typically colorful Hitchcock climax. Instead, the action stays firmly within the confines of the stage proscenium. Nonetheless, it's worth seeing for the fine performances of feisty Edmund Gwenn (repeating his role from the 1920 version, directed by B.E. Doxat-Pratt) and alluring Phyllis Konstam. Odd to find Edward Chapman well down the cast list, despite his prominence in Murder, and in an entirely different type of role (which was played by Ivor Barnard in the 1920 film). The other players, led by cute Jill Esmond and matriarch Helen Haye (like Gwenn, repeating her role from the 1920 version), are competent enough, though some of the men, particularly John Longden and Frank Lawton, lack fire. An expansive budget and film noirish lighting does Galsworthy's fast-paced but somewhat stilted old melodrama proud.

Aside from an auction scene that's rather ahead of its time, there isn't really anything worthwhile here. Rather typically of an early sound film, it's so stilled, talky and set-bound that it's hard to keep interest for more than a few minutes at a time. Even though sound film had been commercially widespread for almost three years at the time, The Skin Game still suffers from garbled dialogue and conspicuous periods of silence. The sets are pretty bad, especially the ones used for the backseat of a car and really breaks the sense of immersion.The nouveau rich versus the old aristocracy plot isn't all that interesting either, and plays out like a standard class conflict melodrama for the most part. Edmund Gwenn, a common sight in early Hitchcock films, gives the only really believable performance but even he struggles to leave much of an impression thanks to the numerous technical issues. The rest of the cast ranges from bad to mediocre. I'd only recommend this film for Hitchcock fanatics, there just isn't enough here that's worthwhile for anyone else to spend their time on.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who along with his wife Alma Reville adapted the John Galsworthy play, the film's title (in lieu of its more modern definition) refers to something akin to "an eye for an eye" where everyone turns out blind in the end. In other words, no one has "clean hands", in the final accounting of this kind of grudge match.This average drama is not as bad as I was led to believe, and actually contains quite a good, early talkie performance by Edmund Gwenn, playing a character much different from the more gentle roles he would take later in his career. The titled "game" is between industrialist Hornblower (Gwenn), who wants to build factories on what has always been beautiful rolling hills in the name(s) of progress and profit, and the Hillcrist family, who owns (and has always owned) a country home in this idyllic setting. The film's sound quality, so poor during the auction sequence that one can't hear the reading of the land's particulars, improves as the story progresses.Squire (C.V. France) and Mrs. Hillcrist (Helen Haye) are informed by an old farmer (Herbert Ross) and his wife (Dora Gregory), the Jackmans, who have worked the land they've just sold for 30 years, that the new owner, Mr. Hornblower, is planning to build a factory complete with smokestacks on the property. The Hillcrists had a verbal agreement with Hornblower not to evict the Jackmans, but Hornblower explains that he hasn't been able to buy the land he'd intended, so he really has no choice. Gwenn delivers quite a capitalistic monologue, perhaps the film's best scene, as he alternately oozes charm and rigidity. The thought of a factory being built so close to their country home so horrifies the Hillcrists that they employ their lawyer Dawker (Edward Chapman) to find a way out.After unsuccessfully outbidding Hornblower at a land auction (Ronald Frankau plays the auctioneer), during which they'd shunned his daughter-in-law Chloe (Phyllis Konstam) out of spite, the Hillcrists learn from Dawker that Chloe has a sordid past. Konstam, foreshadowing Hitchcock's later use of sexy women, looks stunning; the director utilizing shadows to emphasize her (near hyperventilating) swelling breast. Mrs. Hillcrist is willing to exploit Chloe's past, while the Squire remains uninvolved, insisting their daughter Jill (Jill Esmond), who'd been "flirting" with the youngest Hornblower, Rolf (Frank Lawton), remain "in the dark".Chloe had been a correspondent, something of which her husband Charles (John Longden), Hornblower's eldest son and business partner, was unaware. Dawker uses another man (R.E. Jeffrey, in a leather coat), who'd been at the auction, to set Chloe on edge. When Hornblower finds out about his daughter-in-law's past, he's forced by Dawker and Mrs. Hillcrist to sell back the auction land at a huge loss (5,000 pounds). Dawker had utilized both the man in the leather coat and one of her past clients (George Bancroft) to make Chloe admit her scandalous past. Hornblower makes Dawker and Mrs. Hillcrist hold a bible while swearing to keep quiet about what they know regarding Chloe.The unscrupulous Dawker is unable to keep the secret from Charles, who was curious as to why his father no longer owned title to the auction land. He pursues her to the Hillcrist's home where she commits suicide upon hearing, from behind a curtain, of her husband's loss of any love for her (he'd learned the truth). After helping Rolf fish Chloe's body out of the Hillcrist's swimming pool, Hornblower admits to the Squire that he is beaten. The Squire laments the nature of a "skin game".

John Galsworthy was one of the most popular British novelists of the early twentieth century - his main claim to fame was "The Forsyth Saga" a long series of books following the fortunes of an extended family, principally the older son Soames and his obsession with wealth and property. He also wrote plays - most popular was "The Skin Game".The plot dealt with two families of differing social types in rural England just after the the First World War. The Hillcrists have lived in the same manor house for generations. They are "old money" and the shambling Squire can be seen as a representative of the type of aristocracy who actually caused the Great War. The Hornblowers, on the other hand, are "nouveau riche" and the single minded father (stunningly played by Edmund Gwenn), much to the Squire's disgust has just evicted family retainers, the Jackman's, and plans to surround the Hillcrist estate with factories. Even though Hornblower doesn't have "ancestors" he believes the future belongs to his kind and that the Hillcrists are an anachronism and obstruction to prosperity.To me there is not much attempt to bring the play out from it's stage origins and the only time Hitchcock puts his stamp on it was during the auction scene (but that was also a highlight of the stage play as well). The camera catches the excitement and frenzy of a bidding war during the auction of "The Sentry" - a residential parklike acreage that Hillcrist wants to preserve as the last bit of open land. Hornblower is eventually the winner but due to the shenanigans of Hillcrist, is forced to pay twice it's value and he is furious. The Hillcrists are also angry but plan to get even after hearing of the dark past of Chloe, who is married to Charles, Hornblower's son. Jill Hillcrist (Jill Edmonds) stands in the middle, drawn to Rolf (Frank Lawton) but hating what the family stands for.Chloe was once a professional co-respondent employed by a London agency and Mrs. Hillcrist and their unscrupulous agent Dawker plan to use it to the family's advantage, even though the Squire is above such muckraking. The play was similar to Galsworthy's "The Forsyth Saga" in that it was about social change and the breakdown of conventional class structure. Written at the beginning of the 1920s, an era which saw the rise of the middle class - in the film represented by the ambitious Dawker. Among the players - Jill Esmond, at the time married to Laurence Olivier, went to Hollywood with him but never seemed to photograph as youthful or engagingly as in this movie. Frank Lawton also went to Hollywood where he starred in "David Copperfield". Edmund Gwenn had a massive career in Hollywood but he quickly found a niche in "kindly old gentlemen" roles and never had the variety he did in his British movies. John Longden was in a few early Hitchcocks, went to Australia for a few years and appeared in the controversial "The Silence of Dean Maitland" (1934).