Fantastic!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is time to set some limits to the cult of the director. A bad film by a good director is still a bad film.Hitchcock was a good director and Downhill was a bad film.The problem is not what Hitchcock does with the material but the material itself. The story is not only dated and melodramatic, it is incoherent. It charts the downward spiral of promising public schoolboy, Roddy Berwick, after he is expelled from school for taking the blame for a friend's offence. However, his subsequent descent is not a consequence of this initial misfortune. At each stage it is precipitated by something completely different and the only common factor is Roddy's own feebleness.After expulsion from school he rows with his father and stalks out of his home, so the second step in his decline is due to his pride and pigheadedness.He finds work as an actor and seems to be doing OK. Then, in a ridiculous plot development, he inherits £30,000 which enables him to marry an actress on the make. Although his fortune is £1.3 million in today's money, she runs through it in an improbably short period of time (doesn't he ever read bank statements?) and kicks him out of the house which, for some reason, has been signed over to her. This step in his decline is due to his sheer stupidity.Next we find him as a taxi dancer in France. How or why he has ended up doing this job is a mystery. Is he incapable of holding down a normal job? If not, why doesn't he return to acting? When the sudden irruption of daylight into the dance hall reveals how tawdry it all is, this seems to come as a revelation to him. Apparently, it hadn't previously occurred to him that squiring middle-aged women round a dance floor, as a low-rent gigolo, might be regarded as a bit demeaning.He takes this disillusionment badly and promptly sinks even lower until he ends up in a Marseilles flop house, where he is now ill and delirious. It is difficult to account for this final stage in his decline other than that is was needed to complete a predetermined pattern.With the aid of some sailors he returns to England and eventually makes it back to his own home. It is not obvious what he has done to earn this help from these relative strangers. His father is now full of repentance and says: "Forgive me, I know everything."For a youth of whom great things were expected, it cannot be said that Robby acquits himself very well in his adversity.That is the material Hitchcock has to work with and although he has fun with a few of the scenes (as other reviewers have documented) there really isn't anything he can do to salvage this pointless farrago. Ultimately, this is not a story: it is just a succession of Ivor Novello's self-pitying, masochistic fantasies.Of course, from the very beginning of his career Hitchcock had command of a rich cinematic vocabulary so you can find a number of Hitchcock touches even in this picture. Individual scenes undoubtedly have their merit, but the picture as a whole is just an utterly negligible trifle.In the Sixties, when Hitchcock was interviewed at length by Francois Truffaut about his whole body of work, he had very little to say about this movie.Perhaps we can best honour his memory by following his lead.

I found this on the internet archives.It was free,but,why do classic distributors and broadcast classic film channels have less respect for film history,especially if it open? selfishness.So films like this end up as public domain.You have to be really be into classic films which the mainstream side is not much into,except for what is introduced for them, by big entertainment business.They don't go deep on the internet to fine obscurities like this .They follow order from big business and big t.v.Ivor ,I though,was portraying a college student,It looked it .But it was a private boarding school,he was suppose to play a teenager.The plot? After he and his best friend Tim,played by Robin Irvine, both dance with Mabel,played by Annette Benson,in which Tim does a little necking with her. She goes to the dean and accuse both of causing her to be pregnant.Ivor takes the blame for Tim.Ivor gets kicked out of school.His father Sir Thomas Berwick,played by Norman Mckinnel,does not believe him neither.So Ivor decide to go out and be on his own.Things star looking good when he lands as an extra for the London stage,sound like Ivor is portraying some of his real life.The problem is that he falls in love with the leading actress played by a young Isabel Jeans,GiGi's Aunt,,who has a sugar daddy played by an early Ian Hunter,who looks as old he did in the talkies.It when Ivor gets a letter that one of his dads relatives has left him 30,000 pounds ,that he thinks that it's so much money .He ends up marrying Isabel.She start to drains him financially and goes back to Hunter.Now poor Ivor is a dancing gigolo for ugly wealthy broads at a day club.He gets fed up with that.He gets so delirious that in his run down armament his buddy both black and white ,decide to put him on a little ship to help over come his sickness .He gets better .He end up going back to daddy and Daddy apologizes and even though Ivor is an adult now he goes back to finish school.In spite of that it was still good .Excellent print for public domain 09/5/13

I just watched this film which I purchased on Ebay. I am a fan of Ivor Novello primarily because of his operatic musicals of the thirties and forties. I saw The Lodger recently and was impressed with his performance, read a biography or two, enjoyed Jeremy Northam's portrayal in Gosford Park, and am hunting for other performances in the cinema. This movie is very well done and adds an interesting insight into Hitchcock's early career. The quality of the acting, photography, use of symbolism are undeniable. I thought the impression that women are a bit dangerous was a major point but at least his mother cared about him although she didn't seem to resist his father's impulsive banishment. This is a film which held my interest throughout and I highly recommend it.

My copy of this movie is truly silence with no musical score. Whenever I watch a movie that is completely silent, initially I find it a little hard. But when the film is well made, as this one is, it doesn't take long to adjust and focus on the story as you are drawn into it. I feel Hitchcock was a master of the silent film genre with his ability to tell such a deep story with very few intertitles. Relying instead on the expressions of the actors and written notes and signs in the movie, without having to cut away to an intertitle, which allows the film to flow more fluidly instead of constant cutting between the live action and the title cards. Ivor Novello in the lead role of Roddy and in his prior work with Hitchcock in The Lodger really impressed me with his talent of conveying his feelings strictly through facial expressions and acting without the use of sound. Hitch is also good at using subtle exaggeration and focus on action to help take the place of the sound in his silent films. The story is that of a young man in school who is falsely accused of theft by a lady that he had danced with and he is willing to take the blame for a friend of his and is expelled from school. This leads to the downhill spiral of his life as leaves home after his father calls him a "LIAR!". Things get worse from there as ends up working as a gigolo in Paris, getting in fights, losing a large sum of money, and eventually hitting bottom.In this film we really begin seeing a lot of Hitchcock's visual style that he is so famous for. He has some really good use of fades and graphic matches between scenes. Two of my favorite where the fading out on the pocket watch and into a large clock, and the other being the scene where he fades out on a photograph and then back in on the real person. I really enjoyed the symbolic shot of Roddy heading down the escalator, showing us that is in heading downhill in his life. And my favorite "Hitch" shot in this movie was the point-of-view shot when the lady was leaning back in her chair and it cuts to Roddy walking into the room and we see him upside down on the screen. I also thought Hitchcock did a great job of portraying Roddy's seasickness towards the end of the film. I really enjoy seeing Hitchcock's style developing in his early silent films, that will become so prominent in his later, more famous movies. I also really appreciate Hitch's working in comedic scenes into his serious movies. My favorite humorous scene in this movie is the peashooter scene early in the film.Without giving too much away, I would have liked to see a more typical Hitchcock ending to this film. *** (out of 4 stars)