Blu-ray Review: HITCHCOCK: THE BEGINNING
Some of Alfred Hitchcock’s early films get the release they deserve with StudioCanal’s Blu-ray box-set, Hitchcock: The Beginning. This epic collection features ten of Hitchcock’s early works, covering the period from 1927 to 1932. It’s the perfect way to discover how the director formed his visual style and mastery of cinematic language. The truly mind-boggling aspect of this is not only that the filmmaker was able to make 10 films on only five years, but also how fast filmmaking itself changed over that same period of time.
The ten films included in the collection are:
- The Ring (1927)
- The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
- Champagne (1928)
- The Manxman (1929)
- Blackmail (1929)
- Juno and the Paycock (1930)
- Murder! (1930)
- The Skin Game (1931)
- Rich and Strange (1931)
- Number Seventeen (1932)
The films included in the set see Hitchcock segue from silent films (starting with The Ring, his sixth film as director) into the sound era with 1929’s Blackmail. Blackmail actually includes two different versions (silent and ‘talkie’), as the studio wanted Hitchcock to include sound midway through the thriller’s production. This makes it a fascinating film to watch – in either form – and it’s a true education if you manage to see both films back-to-back.
Offering up plenty of food for thought, Hitchcock: The Beginning is a real treat for film fans to chart the rise of one of cinema’s great directors. I won’t pretend that the films here are Alfred Hitchcock’s finest – but they are a great education in not only showing the development of cinema as a burgeoning art form but also how one of its great masters evolved as its tools and technology changed.
Special Features
Hitchcock: The Beginning also features Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy Of Blackmail, a 72-minute documentary directed by film documentarian extraordinaire, Laurent Bouzereau. Narrated by film critic Elvis Mitchell, the piece focusses on how Blackmail became a seminal work in Alfred Hitchcock’s career – and the impact it had on his style and visual inventiveness.
This collection also includes a plethora of other extras including are new/alternative scores, commentaries, snippets of Hitchcock’s celebrated conversations with French filmmaker François Truffaut and much more.
In a word: stacked!
