RICH AND STRANGE

UK, 1932, 83 minutes, Black and white.
Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Elsie Randolph.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Rich and Strange is a strange Hitchcock film, especially in the light of his subsequent career. It has overtones of the comedies of the time and Hitchcock uses techniques familiar to him from the silent era, including captions. It is not a
crime or suspense film? It has echoes in some of the social comedy throughout Hitchcock's films from Mr. & Mrs. Smith to To Catch A Thief. The title comes from a quotation of Shakespeare from The Tempest about sea voyages and the effects being rich and strange. The film looks old now but is an interesting moralising fable. It is interesting in its being the work of the Catholic Hitchcock’s - the director and his wife being responsible for the screenplay and the production as well as the direction. They seem to be moralising - or are they envying the worldly life?

1. The place of this film in the Hitchcock canon? Hitchcock's silent career and the transition to sound? His work in comedy? The film as a fable? The echoes of social comedy throughout Hitchcock's thrillers?

2. The work of the British film industry in the early '30s, the brevity of the film, studio work. location photography? Black and white? Musical score? The use of the silent captions - and their comic effect?

3. The focus of the title and Shakespeare and The Tempest? The ruefulness and irony?

4. The comedy of the opening - a collage of the '30s rat-race? The effectiveness of the build-up of the man returning home from the office - and audiences identifying this? The comic touches and detail? The humour of Home Sweet Home? Establishing the characters. Freddy's problem? The return to Home Sweet Home at the end - and lessons learnt or not?

5. The 'what if ..' situation? Freddy's complaints? Emily's being satisfied at how? The sudden intervention of the money? The build-up to the trip - and the humorous captions about crossing the Channel,, crossing France, crossing the room?

6. The establishing of the trip, the humorous touches? Audience identification with this couple? Freddy's seasickness? Paris and the risque nightclubs? A British look at French musical comedy - and the ironic anti-puritan touches?

7. The ship at Marseilles, travelling to the exotic East? Freddy and his continued seasickness? Emily and her enjoying the voyage? The inevitability of the marriage break-up, the new attachments? The conventions of sex comedy and farce?

8. Freddy as the British type - dissatisfied with life, his seasickness, the attachment to the princess and infatuation (and her being a fraud)? The ports and his going off with the princess? The princess being sketches as the adventurous shipboard type? Her fickleness?

9. Emily as the British housewife? Gordon as the exotic British gentleman with the colonial background? Shipboard romance, their being thrown together, the romantic touches of night and the moon? Kissing? Emily and her having to make decisions? Gordon as the popular type - the possibility of a happy life for Emily?

10. The effect of the break-up on Freddy and Emily? Their return to each other, the reconciliation? Losing their money, the slow boat back to England?

11. The humour of the shipwreck? Their willingness to face death? Preparation for it? The effect of surviving? wandering the ship, the sinking of the ship, the rescue in the Chinese junk? The rescue of the cat - and the irony of seeing that the tasty meal was the cat?

12. The return home - home as the same or never the same again? Would they learn their lesson or had the appetite for adventure been whetted?

13. Hitchcock's flair for comedy, fable, domestic sequences? Was the film a satirical critique of the British - or in favour of a life of adventure?