One of my all time favorites.

Admirable film.

A different way of telling a story

The acting in this movie is really good.

The Skin Game is mediocre at best when it comes to stories - a story of two rich families with a petty argument between them which turns into an all out war of families feuding with a very tragic ending. All this drama over a petty argument.The best parts of the film is the auction, just as others have mentioned. It really is an intense scene and very well filmed at that. I loved the camera motion here when we saw the auctioneer's view point with edits to view the auctioneer as well. The other best part of the film is the ending, it's sad, tragic and nicely filmed as well. The rest of the movie is very, very dry or bland.The film is worth watching if you are really into young Alfred Hitchcock's directing career or just want to see a melodrama that you have yet to see. I would not say this is a film that most people would enjoy - I honestly believe that most would be bored to tears unless they are viewing the auction scene.5/10

I recently saw Hitchcock's "Rich and Strange" and really enjoyed it, so I was game for another go at this early 1930's British cinema, in my attempt to become a "Hitchcock completist." Please keep in mind that I'm an American with a pretty-good ear for British dialog, but there are some speeches contained here that I couldn't understand in the least. But only a fairly small portion that is. The early sound equipment doesn't help either.The title "The Skin Game" refers to a heated altercation that leaves no holds barred, and no prisoners taken. The plot line is essentially a "Hatfields and McCoys" family feud over land rights, with a lot of dirt being dug up on both families involved. Like pretty much all early sound films, there is a heavy reliance on dialog and the spoken phrase, which makes "The Skin Game" obviously derived from the stage.At the beginning there's a long take with probably ten pages of dialog in it, using a medium shot of three characters, with the camera panning between them. At least once, someone was speaking dialog while not on camera, which I always find distracting -- a minor flaw I admit, but noticeable. Hitchcock's pacing feels relatively quick considering, and he keeps interest in these scenes with dramatic exits and entrances of characters, and revelations of plot details.Really some of these takes were so long that actors coughed, dropped things and retrieved them, and other apparent flubs that were never re-shot. Seems like once the director was five minutes into a scene he couldn't afford the film stock to begin again, so there are a lot of miscues and such, which kind of adds to the immediacy. Especially considering that I'm certain that even the young Hitchcock was keenly aware of every missed cue and dropped line, and it had to drive him to distraction! I was certainly impressed by this early Hitchcock effort and I'm sure that audiences back then went away from this one with the feeling that they got their money's worth. It was apparent that an extremely talented film maker was at work here, trying to keep the audience involved every step of the way. And he did succeed actually.For instance, there is a scene at an auction house that lasts for about ten minutes, and Hitchcock sets it up in such a way to keep the audience anxiously awaiting the outcome. He has the camera making very fast pans from one bidder to the next, slowing down only when the bidding does. The audience has some background information about the proceedings, but not enough to spoil the surprise at the end.It's early sound cinema -- so most viewers today can't bear this kind of thing, but if you're familiar with and enjoy films of the early 20Th Century, it's extremely enjoyable and does have a payoff at the end! *** out of *****

This early film, part of the Signature Collection, by Hitchcock -- "A Talking Picture" -- is marred by a poor transfer or, more likely, poor recording in the first place. Sometimes the dialog is obscured by a buzz. It was tough making a talking picture in 1931 in Britain. The camera was the size of a dirigible and the microphones were hidden in tea pots. These and other conditions rather hobbled the director.That being understood, this still is by no means an outstanding movie. If it strives for Shakespearian impact, it winds up with the Hatfield and McCoys.Two families feud over a large plot of empty land. The Hillcrests are upper class. They've owned one of those country estates since Elizabeth I. The Hornblowers, especially the patriarch, Edmund Gwenn, are ambitious and working-class. Gwen meets the Hillcrests and offers to buy them out. After all, his mills surround their place. Of course they won't sell because they treasure their peace and quiet. The frustrated Gwenn storms out, warning, "I mean business." The quarrel then takes the shape of a conflict over that large empty plot, and there is a tense and pertinent scene of bidding and counter-bidding at its auction. It winds up in the hands of the Hornblowers by means of a subterfuge. Oh -- the Hillcrests always refer to Horblower as "Hawn-blah." I forgive them for that. If British accents sound a little strange to American ears, well, it's all Noah Webster's fault.Ticked off at the fact that they will now likely be surrounded entirely by Hornblower and his Satanic mills, the Hillcrests dig up some dirt on his daughter-in-law which leads to her tragic death.The ending: The Hillcrests are filled with sadness and guilt. Hornblower is their Nemesis, clearing that empty plot of its trees and, presumably, putting up the world's most foul dung heap of a mill.The conflict is established in the first scene when a Hillcrest daughter (on horseback) meets a young Hornblower man (in an automobile). They describe to each other what they're looking for in the future. Hillcrest says, "We call it spoiling," and Hornblower replies, "We call it progress." When I was a kid I'd have sided with the Hornblowers. Now I'm not at all sure. This particular area of England seems headed towards the Welsh countryside of "How Green Was My Valley." The acting of the principles is outrageously florid, as if they were still trying to reach the balconies. Phyllis Konstam, in particular, postures and sweeps around, her voice quivering in that stagy way that John Gielgud sometimes adopted. The pauses between utterances sometimes are longer than they need to be and it slows down the pace of the movie.It's a rather bland B movie in almost every way and Hitchcock only twice experiments with visual effects and montage, one during a dizzy spell and the other showing us the noise and squalor of the mill town using bawling sheep, barking dogs, haggling men, and noisy truck horns.Not worth going out of your way to watch, but still not entirely without at least historical interest, if not artistic.

Although widely regarded as one of the best directors ever to make movies, Alfred Hitchcock made occasional duds along the way. Shortly after his first talkie, Blackmail (1929), Hitchcock went through a major lull and what he described as his "lowest ebb". For a four year period he made films that didn't interest him and didn't allow his creative juices to flow - films like Juno And The Paycock, Rich And Strange and Waltzes From Vienna. Also made around that time was The Skin Game, a talky and generally unexceptional adaptation of a John Galsworthy play made as part of Hitch's contractual obligation to British International Pictures. In later years Hitchcock always maintained that he never really wanted to make this film, that it was forced upon him by the studio, and if this is true then it goes a long way towards explaining why it is such a static, unenthusiastic offering.Aristocratic landowner Mr Hillcrist (C.V. France) sells a row of cottages to a self-made businessman, Mr Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn). However, Hornblower deliberately goes back on an agreement by ejecting an elderly couple, the Jackmans, from their cottage even though he made a verbal promise not to do so. Hillcrist is furious when he hears of this, but his fury only increases when he learns that Hornblower wants the cottages to house a group of workers. Seems Hornblower has plans to buy a picturesque piece of countryside right outside Hillcrist's grand mansion and build factories upon it. After a dramatic auction for the said land, Hornblower emerges with the winning bid. However Mrs Hillcrist (Helen Haye) refuses to accept defeat lying down and tirelessly seeks a way of gaining the upper hand in the battle of wills between the two families. She gets just the handle she is looking for when it emerges that Hornblower's daughter-in-law, Chloe (Phyliss Konstam), has a scandalous past. Before marrying into the Hornblower clan, hard-up Chloe was allegedly paid to play the lover with several married men seeking divorces. She has never told anyone about this unsavoury secret, including her husband Charles Hornblower (John Longden). When Mrs Hillcrist threatens to publicise the truth unless Hornblower surrenders ownership of the land he has bought, she sets in motion a chain of events that lead to scandal, broken relationships and eventually suicide.Even in a film as uncharacteristic and unremarkable as this, Hitchcock still manages a few innovative touches. The auction sequence, by far the best and most dramatically absorbing part of the film, is notable for its use of clever zip pans. The camera zips frantically from face to face as the bidding intensifies, adding drama and urgency to the scene. There are several fine performances too, particularly Gwenn as the arrogant Hornblower and Haye as the the merciless Mrs Hillcrist. These two commanding performances lift the film considerably and make bearable some of the long-winded, dialogue-heavy scenes. The Skin Game's plot, however, contains very few of the themes and features that typify most of Hitchcock's work - as one reviewer noted "the film is more Galsworthy than Hitchcock and seems very stagy". For this reason the film is not an especially worthwhile one and should perhaps only be sought out by Hitchcock completists or fans of the original play. Everyone else is likely to find The Skin Game somewhat disappointing.