Movie Review: Champagne (1928) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The Girl (Betty Balfour) is a spoiled heiress who is in love with The Boy (Jean Bradin.) The Father (Gordon Harker) thinks the boy is a “cake hound” who is after the family money, so has forbidden the girl to see him. The girl promptly hired a plane to take her out to sea, so that she can board the passenger liner that is taking the boy to France. The happy couple are reunited, but the boy doesn’t like the way the girl assumes that she’s in charge, as though money makes her above him. (She doesn’t think like that; it’s more of a thoughtless impulse thing.)
Also aboard the liner is The Man (Ferdinand von Alten), a suave somewhat older fellow who has a mustache and a slightly sinister air. He takes an interest in the girl, which she finds alternately flattering and kind of creepy.
The boy’s jealousy issues flare up (aided by a bad case of sea sickness) and he and the girl haven’t quite made up by the time they arrive in France. When he does come to visit the girl, she’s running with a wild crowd, and he makes some cutting remarks about the gaudy dresses she’s purchased.
Shortly thereafter, the father arrives and announces that he’s lost all his money in the stock market, and they’re broke. He moves into the small apartment, the boy goes away (he’s not sure how to handle the situation) and when the girl tries to sell her jewelry to have a nest egg for herself and her father, it’s stolen.
As the girl has never had to fend for herself before, she’s useless at domestic chores like cooking. The boy returns, and offers to marry her and even support her father, but the girl picks this hill to die on, she’ll find some way to make ends meet. Even if it’s becoming a flower girl at a cabaret.
And the man has been lurking about all this time…what is his dark secret?
This silent comedy film was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s last silents, and very much a movie he was told to make, rather than one he chose to make. While there are certainly comedy bits in it, I can’t call it a “romantic comedy” because the romance never works for me. The boy seems to hate everything about the girl’s personality, and the jealousy issues keep flaring up. For long segments, I was wondering if this was supposed to be a drama film.
Which is not to say it’s all bad. There’s some innovative camera work, the bread-making scene is good comedy, most of the movie is shot well. There’s just enough ambiguity in the man’s presentation and actions to keep suspense in the film (the final reveal has a logic hole in it, but that can be handwaved.)
Content note: As the title suggests, there’s a lot of drinking in this movie (even though the characters are nominally Americans, almost all the movie takes place outside the country so Prohibition isn’t a thing.) Also quite a bit of smoking (the father chomps a cigar while doing calisthenics!) And a sexual assault scene that turns out to be imaginary. Oh, and the father assaults his black employee and isn’t much nicer to the other workers.
Most of the copies of this film in circulation are poor quality; mine has a “soundtrack” of someone’s public domain classic music CD. This one’s for Hitchcock completists.
