Hitch #11 - Juno and the Paycock (1929)

OH this was a yawn! Maybe I was tired anyway but this painfully stage-y piece was always going to struggle to keep me awake. The earnest acting of the leads occasionally jerked me from my near-slumber - and Mrs 'Juno' Boyle, the one character with any depth and any heart, sometimes awakened a little bit of my attention. But Sarah Allgood as Mrs Boyle wasn't enough and doze off I did.

After early Hitch magic can clearly be seen in many films prior to this one, here he leaves everything to the stage play and little to his imagination - The Times at the time wrote:

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, director of the British International talking film of Juno and the Paycock, which was privately shown at the Regal Cinema on Monday, has been so faithful to his text as almost to forget the medium in which he was working.

And that in a nutshell is the problem with this film. It's not a piece of cinematic art, it's a piece of theatrical record and that held no interest for me. So occasionally I may have been found ... resting my eyes ... during some painful scenes (mostly those involving Joxer and Mrs Madigan).

Watched: 2016-07-26
Source: DVD
Rating: 1/10

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