Day 45: Young and Innocent / The Girl Was Young (1937)

Nearing the end of Hitchcock's British films, only two more to go, then it's off to Hollywood.

Hitichcock's British and American films differ greatly, and this films encapsulates the essence of his British films. The mystery/thriller nature of the film is only the ground upon which the romantic comedy rests. The film opens with a dead woman on the beach (maybe that's where Welles got his idea for the famously missing shot from his film Mr. Arkadin), and the police arrest Robert Tisdall who happens to find her body. For some odd reason the police don't even question or consider the dead woman's husband, who happens to be the killer. Robert escapes police custody in an attempt to free his name, and along the way he meets up with the police Chief Constable's daughter, Erica, who helps him track down proof that he is innocent. They, of course, not only prove his innocent, find the actual murderer, get him to confess, but fall madly in love.

My thoughts on this film are random and don't necessarily fall to any rhyme or reason, so they will appear in bullet points instead:
- Why the change in title? The original British title, Young and Innocent, clearly refers to Robert; whereas the American title, The Girl Was Young, clearly refers to Erica. Robert is both young and innocent and it pertains to the film, whereas while Erica was young, it has no pertinence to the film at all. I can imagine a film today being called Young and Innocent being mistaken for pornography, but I doubt that was the case in 1937. I assume that the American distributors felt that the name change would sell better, but I don't understand the logic.

- In many of Hitchcock's British films the girl is captured/forced/tricks into helping the innocent man, and she eventually falls in love with him; yet we never get to see the outcome afterward. Could this not just be Stockholm syndrome? Or rather yet, are we to believe women were that naive and trusting? I'd like to have seen Hitchcock make a film where the women believes she is helping an innocent man and falls for him, only to have it turn out he was guilty all along.

- The murder is basically a MacGuffin. While not a MacGuffin in the classic sense, it is an event that occurs that causes the elements of the film to happen that is basically forgotten about until the very end of the film. The story is about Robert proving he's innocent, not about proving who actually did it. The husband, aka the murder, appears int he first scene, and then doesn't appear until the last 5 minutes of the film where is playing drums in a band in blackface. He is captured and in the closing shot of the film, he confesses and Robert and Erica hold hands and smile at each other. There is no reason why he did it, though it could be construed that he felt his wife was cheating on him with Robert so he framed him. The point is that the murder could have been anything, because Robert was innocent and the real culprit was not the consideration of the film. While Hitchcock used this technique frequently, in this film it feels overly deliberate and poorly fulfilled. People don't kill with no reason, so don't expect the audience to believe as such. I'm sure most of the audience could care less, and is simply happy the couple are safe and together, but that's just laziness.

- There is a nice tracking shot, running over a minute, at the end of the film as the camera zooms in on the murderer. Always nice to see well crafted camera work.

- There has to be a comment made about the murderer being discovered and caught while wearing blackface. A lot can be read into that, and I'm not going to get into it. It's there, it happened, read into it what you will.