Right from the Start
Tests of Love in Alfred Hitchcock’s directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden.
Italian publicity poster for The Pleasure Garden (1925). © ITV plc
Dr. Strauss originally presented this material at HitchCon 2021.— Ed.
AS ONE OF THE HUNDREDS—DARE I SAY THOUSANDS— of authors writing about Hitchcock in books, journals and websites, I’m happily intent to better understand and articulate the director’s cinematic style by focusing on details large and small throughout his oeuvre. While he’s usually known for exploring the dark side of human nature, his films frequently strike a hopeful tone for their heroes and heroines. In this article, I’d like to spotlight Hitchcock’s propensity for the positive.
À la Lesley Brill in his continually insightful 1988 book The Hitchcock Romance, I believe that the director adds his signature spin to the convivial conventions of romanticism in nearly every plotline: adventure-filled quests by everyday people in extraordinary circumstances, impacted by coincidence, deviant villains to foil, mid-narrative epiphanies, and miraculously “triumphant,” loving denouements (1988, pp. 6 – 7). Ordinary people in unusual situations remind us of Aristotle's "semblances of truth"—artistic experiences that truly feel real—which, after and in fact because of adversity, can lead us to cathartic feelings of renewal for protagonist and audience alike. These elements encapsulate some of the life-affirming qualities of Romanticism, and are evident in Hitchcock’s characters’ quests for love, however successful or equivocal.
An inveterate optimist myself, I tend towards this buoyant outlook in life as well as in my own analyses. After Hitch’s protagonists battle dastardly scoundrels and/or their own tragic flaws, the happy (or at least hopeful) endings of The Lodger, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, and North by Northwest, among others, leave us feeling good about our heroes, blessedly relieved about the healthy relationships we trust will follow. Even in the romantically uncertain endings of films such as Blackmail, The Skin Game, Rebecca, Suspicion, and Marnie, those ambiguities appear to be sanguine parables of progress, not descents into despair. He knew that we knew that, because of the conventions of Romantic love, he could never give us a wholly tragic ending, however twisted his characters’ paths to happiness may be.
His message, I believe, is one of hope, even redemption, in the face of the chaos and anarchy. As movie analyst Philip Strick said:
If one symbol had to be selected to summarize the Hitchcock message in half a century of film-making, it should not, in fact, be one of mayhem, as the maestro would undoubtedly have recommended. More accurately it would be the sight of Marnie being led by the hand toward the possibility of a new life! (pp. 160 – 161)
Apropos another film, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, in their groundbreaking First Forty-Four Films, said:
The most beautiful scene takes place in a taxi. It is hardly more than a succession of shots and reverse shots, but Hitchcock has found the way to go beyond the words and make us understand what these people think, to render fascinating this exchange of thoughts that search each other out, meet, or flee. When Eve and Inspector Smith get into the cab, she is a young girl and he a detective. They talk of this and that. When the taxi pulls up, it is a couple of lovers who get out…. (1957, p. 105)
It is only through active interrelationships, especially those of genuine intimacy, of shared exploits public and private, can people work out their problems and create healthy lives for themselves. Hitchcock’s films are parabolic parables that circle back on themselves with renewed vigor. Round-trip excursions at a price, his characters always have the chance to learn something important about life and love. Hopefully, we do, too.
Let us take Hitchcock’s premier film as sole director, 1925’s silent The Pleasure Garden—released to the general UK public in January, 1927—as the first of fifty-two extant examples wherein we all might glean something useful, even meaningful, about life and love. The four main protagonists—Patsy, Jill, Levet, and Hugh—are all given opportunities to work through their challenging circumstances—but only two will experience the onset of progress by film’s end.
Jill Cheyne arrives in the big city. (BFI Films)
Right from the start, Hitchcock finesses our affinities, presenting Jill Cheyne (Carmelita Geraghty), a wannabe chorus girl at The Pleasure Garden Theatre, in a sympathetic light. We first see her in a brightly lit, lovingly shot closeup that makes her out to be a naïve, fish-out-of-water version of Patsy (Virginia Valli)—another, more seemingly worldly-wise, chorus girl who knew how to give up a hair curl instead of her self-respect to a backstage lecher.
Outside the theatre, two thieves surreptitiously steal items from Jill’s pocketbook, and we immediately feel sorry for her—as we are meant to—a single woman in the big city with no job, no money and no place to sleep. After she enters the theater, two other men, both smart-asses, mock and leer at her, but “the poor and honest hands of Patsy Brand,” as a title card states, shoves them away and offers to take Jill in for the night. The director, however, immediately makes us work hard to keep caring for her. Jill throws a teasing eye back at the boys as she leaves with Patsy—a tipoff to what her true character is, but it goes by so quickly it hardly registers.
Patsy, juggling wolves at The Pleasure Garden Theater. (BFI Films)
In rapid succession, however, we see Jill snootily enter Patsy’s flat (followed by her comically huge trunk of possessions), complain to the landlady about the all-too-modest accommodations, roughly throw Patsy’s dog, Cuddles, off the bed, yawn over a photo of her fiancé, gripe over taking care of an old lady in the country back home, disgustedly throw the Cuddles’ bone off the bed and—unforgivably, in dog-doting Hitchcock’s world—kick the sweet creature away when it lovingly licks her feet. Finally, she appropriates most of Patsy’s bed and blanket as they go to sleep. But we still root for her because, in and around these character reveals, Hitchcock diverts us with three scenes: titillatingly implied nudity, by showing us their growing piles of clothes as they undress offscreen; Patsy’s selflessness as she again promises to take care of Jill; and Jill’s prayers, plaintively uttered at the foot of the bed—all seductive and engrossing distractions from Jill’s burgeoning egocentrism.
The next morning, she continues her self-centered behavior, weaseling her way into the lead position of the chorus (at four times the pay of everyone else) by wrapping the manager, Mr. Hamilton, around her little finger. (Although, as a dancer myself, I can tell you that the fake Charleston she poorly approximates would not get anyone a job. It’s more of a snow job.)
By now, we realize that Hitchcock has switched our allegiance from the poor but not-so-innocent, conniving Jill Cheyne to the “poor and honest” Patsy Brand. As Raymond Durgnat tells us in his 1974 The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, “the waif turns out to be a bitch [and] the other wins through only after her grit is tested by a hard tussle with life’s disappointments” (p. 66).
Once we meet Hugh Fielding, Jill’s fiancé, we realize he is another honest soul searching for love—but Hitchcock complicates our sympathies further by having him and Patsy hit it off immediately, when she trips over him playing with her Cuddles—a good sign—and they chat sitting on the floor, like best friends. More complexities arise when a colleague of Hugh’s, Levet (played by a wonderfully oily Miles Mander), inveigles his way into Patsy’s heart. Hitchcock’s ability to move our kinships around among not just two but multiple characters always challenge us to discover which relationships have the best chance of success.
Patsy unselfishly wishes not just fame, but happiness, for Jill, even promising Hugh she’ll keep an eye on her for him. But by now, Hitchcock has compelled us to ask, “Who should we care for, Jill or Patsy?” As we shift our allegiances back and forth, the deeper question Hitchcock is asking, I think, is: “Who would we seek love with—a gold digger, or someone with a heart of gold?” The answer is obvious, and consistent with expected romantic conventions.
Hugh and Patsy meet cute, with the dog’s approval. (BFI Films)
Of course, Hitchcock, as throughout his entire canon, will not allow his characters—or his audience—to ever achieve such happiness easily. And when we think about it, isn’t hard-earned love worth more than having it magically appear?
As the eternally annoyed and petulant Jill moves up the class ladder, barely appearing in the second half of the film, Patsy’s sadness over losing a potential friend allows Levet to weasel his way into her life—but Cuddles does nothing but bark at him, prefiguring the similarly intuitive howling dachshund in Secret Agent eleven years hence. Patsy’s loneliness all too quickly succumbs to Levet’s ultimately empty entreaties, and she must quite rightly learn the hard way who to trust and not to trust, and how to trust herself, too—so we sadly but hopefully accompany her in her long and winding quest for self-respect and love.
Selling herself short with Levet by too easily giving in to his wooing, and then acting so happy so quickly about their marriage, Patsy’s sudden choice makes us want to yell, “Don’t be a patsy, Patsy!” (Couldn’t resist, sorry!) Hitchcock then has Levet turn his back on her and the camera, followed by cross-cut shots of him in profile, preventing us entrée to what he’s really thinking. In his deftly detailed The Murderous Gaze, William Rothman said:
In such a profile shot, the camera frames its subject in a way that does not allow that figure’s interiority to be penetrated. Indeed, such a shot declares that impenetrability; it announces that we have come to a limit of our access to the world of the film. (Rothman, 1982, p. 22)
Portending disaster, but played for laughs, their wedding day is drenched in a pouring rain. And when a sopping wet Levet comes inside her apartment to give her a kiss, the all-knowing canine, Cuddles, again begins to howl. On their on-location honeymoon at a gorgeously shot Lake Como in Italy, marital bliss is just not in the cards, as both look outside of themselves for fulfillment: in one sequence, Hitch shows her asking God for happiness, while he just yawns, bored—like Jill earlier after flippantly sharing a photo of Hugh. “You threw away the rose I gave you,” says Patsy, in a title card. “Had to—it had wilted,” Levet replies, unemotionally.
Levet grows bored with Patsy’s religious values. (BFI Films)
Shortly after their honeymoon, in an unnamed exotic locale, Levet arrives back at work sans Patsy. Taking up a native mistress who welcomes him with open arms, they head back to their waterfront hut—he on horseback, she on foot. (We’ve seen Levet impatiently throw away numerous objects—his hat, a coat, cigarettes, flowers and now women—signposts of his insolence. It won’t happen in this film, but it is Jill and Levet who are meant for each other, equally cruel and disdainful of life.)
Levet soon drowns his mistress—the ultimate way to throw away someone—which we horrifyingly see partly shot underwater. Afterward, delirious with fever—perhaps more his true self than ever—he tries to run Patsy through with a sword, but is himself shot to death. (Just before he dies, Levet snaps out of it and turns sober for a moment, a nearly identical image of Louis’ death in the first Man Who Knew Too Much nine years later.)
In the end, Hugh and Patsy realize they’re meant for each other. The film fades out on their emotionally exhausted features, each having narrowly survived their separate trials. Leavened with sorrow, hopefulness wins out in this film—but just barely—as Hitchcock fulfills the romantic conventions of happily-ever-after in his inimitably equivocal way. The director seems to be telling us that their lesson (and ours) is that enduring one’s circumstances and frailties are merely the essential first steps we must take if we’re to work towards achieving real salvation and love. Lesley Brill again:
[Hitchcock’s] dearest dreams were composed of nothing more remarkable than love and marriage, happy families, and a forgiving universe that allows such things…. At the center of the greater part of his movies [is] an affectionate, profoundly hopeful view of fallen human nature and the redemptive possibilities of love between women and men. (1988, p. xiii)
Returning home with Hugh, Patsy’s dog is ecstatic. “Cuddles knew all the time,” says the final title card. So did we.
The ringers through which Hitchcock’s characters are rung, the serious testing of tentative relationships—these are necessary prerequisites for personal growth to have even half a chance of occurring. In the remaining silent films alone, those ringers run rampant indeed.
Regardless of her budding, easy-going relationship with the lodger in the film of the same name, Daisy must first extricate herself from the oppressive fears of her working-class parents and her naïve, judgmental boyfriend detective Joe. In Downhill, Roddy’s lingering sense of loyalty to his school chum Tim is tested beyond his limits, and he quickly falls for the seduction of a siren and the greedy lifestyle that only money can buy. Leaving little room for emotional advancement, he is barely saved by his father’s belated supplication of forgiveness. Similarly, Larita Felton’s two marriage mistakes in Easy Virtue suggest that the desire for love is no match for blinding class prejudice. And so on in The Ring, Farmer’s Wife, Champagne, Manxman, Blackmail and beyond.
Hitchcock constantly needles us, in his pleasantly manipulative way, to take heed from events that aim to tear us asunder, beginning with his first film and, I would say, continuing through his last. If our lives are to thrive and move towards health, we must figure out how, like his main protagonists—in spite of and even because of our frailties—to reckon honestly, positively, with the turmoil life throws our way.
Works cited
Brill, Lesley. (1988). The Hitchcock Romance: Love and Irony in Hitchcock’s Films. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Durgnat, Raymond. (1974). The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock: or the Plain Man’s Hitchcock. London: Faber and Faber.
Humphries, Patrick. (1986). The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. London: Bison.
Rohmer, Eric & Chabrol, Claude. (1957). Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films. NY: Frederick Ungar. (Trans. 1979)
Rothman, William. The Murderous Gaze. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
