I'm going into a marathon of earlier Hitchcock earlier features (the silent ones and the pre-1934 talkies) and there's the same French expert who announces the film and provides some interesting backstories about the making and many appetizing trivia. And so it's very telling when the same Hitch enthusiast tells you before the beginning of "The Skin Game" that this is not the director's best film, not even by the era's standards. Granted we know that the real thing started with "The Man Who Knew Too Much", it doesn't set your anticipation very high when you're told from the get-go that you might not enjoy the film and when it takes merely five minutes to say anything remotely interesting about it. But I wouldn't call myself a Hitchcock fan if I didn't have one thing or two to say about "The Skin Game" and it so happens that I have things to say so let's get over it.
For the sake of simplification, let's say that the film is about a feud between two highly-influent families in the English countryside: the upper-class and long established Hillchrists and the nouveau-riches Hornblowers and for the sake of simplicity, let's just say that the three main characters are Mr. And Mrs. Hillchrist (C. V. France and Helen Haye) and Mr. Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn aka Kris Kingle from "Miracle at 34th Street"). May I add that the 'skin game' involves some elaborate schemes from Hornblower consisting on buying land and then booting off the farmers in order to build factories, to which the Hillchrists are firmly opposed. The plot revolves around some counter-attack from the Hillchrist that goes through blackmailing Mr. Hornblower with some dark secret about his daughter-in-law's dubious past. That's the nature of the beast.
The film was based on a 1920 play from John Galsworthy that was adapted into a silent movie version in 1921. Gwenn and France reprised their roles. But this contextualization is just to tell you that the plot was already dated in 1931 when the Great Depression had made these feuds rather obsolete in a time where anyone would have dreamed to see the dark smokes of factories over the green landscapes if that meant more jobs for people. Much more after winning his Nobel Prize, Mr. Galsworthy passed away one year after the film's release. The film belonged to the past during its own present and nothing could possibly elevate it not even among Hitchcock's good enough little films to be watched. But I think the reasons of the film's relative failure are to be counted in three.
First, the acting. It is way too theatrical to be remotely entertaining. Mr. France keeps carrying that constantly infuriated gaze of a sinister school principal, even in his moments of weakness there's never an emotion or a shade of warmth drawn in his stone-face whereas Mrs. Haye struck me as a less likable and thinner version of Margaret Dumont and so these two people who represent the old order, rooted in their bucolic and picturesque past, are rather plain and uninteresting individuals, which makes difficult to root for them. And when the acting takes off to melodramatic summits with actors or actresses looking for long monologues, the adaptation shows its first signs of fatigue and the material gets dangerously risible.
The acting actually highlights what is the strength and therefore the weakness of the film, Mr. Gwenn is a superb actor, he brings in his portrayal of the cocky and straightforward Hornblower the very likability we were demanding in the protagonists. He's smiling, cocky, larger-than-life, with all the stamina that the film lacks and every moment he's here, the film reaches a high spot... I can say that Gwenn reinforces my conviction that Hitchcock films needs faces and actors and some good stories can suffer from unknown faces. I could see the colorful Gwenn who played Santa Klaus or even the corrupt bodyguard in "Foreign Correspondent" and the the film makes him the antagonist, daring us not to root for him. Impossible!
The third weakness is the rather tedious plot that relies way too much on monologues and melodrama with solemn oaths, fainting and all that jazz... and all ends on a bittersweet notes where Mr. Hornblower curses the Hillchrists for what they did and the film concludes on a climate of unpleasantness with Hitchcock who couldn't decide between cynicism or comedy and just went on rolling with the lucidity of the beginner who knows he doesn't have the upper hand.
That said, even in the lesser Hitchcock, there's one golden rule: you have your Hitchcockian scene. And for all the bad things I said, I can say that the film features one of the most memorable auction scenes I've ever seen one that for once allowed Hitchcock to distance himself from the pompous codes of the stage and have the camera go back and forth between one auctioneer to another with various speeds, and Gwenn's subtle eye signals, creating so many swings and double swings it's like watching a Roland Garros finale. Hitchcock was said to film crime like love scenes, this time he filmed an auction like a tennis game, one that went on and on so much, with one agent outbidding another, I couldn't get over it and wish it would never end, for I felt the film had reached its momentum and would feel downhill after...
... just like that tree in the final shot that reminds you that even after a dull movie that it's not the man behind the camera to blame and Hitchcock had a few tricks under his sleeve he destined to better movies.
That's all to say about "Skin Game", a film for hardcore fans only with one great sequence and one great performance... and a competent director striving for greatness.
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