Home > Adventure >

Downhill

Downhill (1928)

January. 01,1928
|
6
|
NR
| Adventure Drama

Roddy, first son of the rich Berwick family, is expelled from school when he takes the blame for his friend Tim's charge. His family sends him away and all of his friends leave him alone. Through many life choices that don't work out in his favor, Roddy begins to find his life slowly spiraling out of his control.

...

Watch Trailer

Cast

Similar titles

Reviews

GazerRise
1928/01/01

Fantastic!

More
StyleSk8r
1928/01/02

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

More
Raymond Sierra
1928/01/03

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

More
Janis
1928/01/04

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

More
cynthiahost
1928/01/05

I found this on the internet archives.It was free,but,why do classic distributors and broadcast classic film channels have less respect for film history,especially if it open? selfishness.So films like this end up as public domain.You have to be really be into classic films which the mainstream side is not much into,except for what is introduced for them, by big entertainment business.They don't go deep on the internet to fine obscurities like this .They follow order from big business and big t.v.Ivor ,I though,was portraying a college student,It looked it .But it was a private boarding school,he was suppose to play a teenager.The plot? After he and his best friend Tim,played by Robin Irvine, both dance with Mabel,played by Annette Benson,in which Tim does a little necking with her. She goes to the dean and accuse both of causing her to be pregnant.Ivor takes the blame for Tim.Ivor gets kicked out of school.His father Sir Thomas Berwick,played by Norman Mckinnel,does not believe him neither.So Ivor decide to go out and be on his own.Things star looking good when he lands as an extra for the London stage,sound like Ivor is portraying some of his real life.The problem is that he falls in love with the leading actress played by a young Isabel Jeans,GiGi's Aunt,,who has a sugar daddy played by an early Ian Hunter,who looks as old he did in the talkies.It when Ivor gets a letter that one of his dads relatives has left him 30,000 pounds ,that he thinks that it's so much money .He ends up marrying Isabel.She start to drains him financially and goes back to Hunter.Now poor Ivor is a dancing gigolo for ugly wealthy broads at a day club.He gets fed up with that.He gets so delirious that in his run down armament his buddy both black and white ,decide to put him on a little ship to help over come his sickness .He gets better .He end up going back to daddy and Daddy apologizes and even though Ivor is an adult now he goes back to finish school.In spite of that it was still good .Excellent print for public domain 09/5/13

More
James Hitchcock
1928/01/06

During my youth in the sixties and seventies silent films were quite regularly shown on British television, but today are they are few and far between even on specialist movie channels, and are hardly ever shown on terrestrial television, perhaps because the generation that can remember the silent era are mostly dead. Many people therefore do not realise that Alfred Hitchcock made a number of silent films during the twenties; they are much less well-known than his Hollywood films of the forties, fifties and sixties, and even than the British talkies like "The Lady Vanishes" which he made in the thirties. "Downhill", recently shown on Sky Classics, is one of them, dating from 1927, towards the end of the silent era. (It was released in the same year as the first talking picture, "The Jazz Singer"). As the film opens its hero, Roddy Berwick, appears to be a fortunate young man. The son of an aristocratic family, he is School Captain at an exclusive public school. He is popular, intelligent and the school's star rugby player. His world collapses when Mabel, a waitress at a local café, announces to the headmaster that she is pregnant and that Roddy is the father. The real culprit, in fact, is Roddy's best friend Tim, but Mabel appears to have singled Roddy out because his family is wealthier than Tim's and she is hoping that she can blackmail them. Out of loyalty to his friend, however, Roddy accepts the blame and expulsion from the school. This is not the end of his misfortunes, however. He is disowned by his father, who believes him guilty of the accusation. He goes to work as an actor and marries a famous actress named Julia, but the marriage is an unhappy one and she leaves him for another man. He inherits £30,000 from a relation, but loses it all, largely due to Julia's extravagance. He becomes a gigolo in Paris, but quits this line of work in disgust and ends up penniless and starving. The theme of Mabel's pregnancy is treated very obscurely, so much so that some have misinterpreted these scenes and incorrectly concluded that Roddy is expelled on a false accusation of theft. This is because the British censors discouraged any discussion of sexual matters. Although the American Hays Office was not set up until the 1930s, its British equivalent, the British Board of Film Censors, had been established in 1912, with the result that film censorship in Britain during the twenties tended to be stricter than in America (and, indeed, than in many European countries). In later years Hitchcock was to become famous for his suspense thrillers; nearly all his Hollywood films, with "Mr and Mrs Smith" a rare exception, fall into this category. In his early British period, however, he made numerous films in other genres as well, and "Downhill" is a melodrama rather than a thriller. It does, however, show evidence of some of the techniques that were later to make him famous, particularly in films like "Spellbound" in which he could indulge his love of the surreal and dreamlike. In one scene Roddy, taken ill while on a ship, experiences a delirious nightmare. Hitchcock also makes use of shots of a descending escalator, not for any literal meaning but as a visual metaphor for Roddy's descent into misfortune, which is of course the significance of the title "Downhill". (It is strange how English and many other languages use the expression "going downhill" as a metaphor for a change in one's fortunes for the worse, even though in reality the lowlands at the foot of a hill are often a more pleasant place to be than the hilltop itself). True colour films were very rare in the twenties, but "Downhill", in common with a number of other monochrome films from the period makes use of the device of film tinting, in which different scenes are tinted in different shades. Orange is normally used for interior scenes and daytime exteriors, blue for nighttime exteriors and green for scenes set at sea and the nightmare sequences. Only a few scenes are in straightforward black-and-white. Even in my youth, most of the silent movies shown on TV were comedies. Indeed, at the time I formed the quite erroneous impression that during the silent era nobody ever made films about serious subjects and that my grandparents' generation only ever went to the cinema to laugh at the antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy. The sort of slapstick at which these comedians excelled has passed the test of time better than the serious films of the era which can look very alien today, largely because they required non-naturalistic acting techniques with which we are unfamiliar. Dialogue had to be supplied by title cards, and in "Downhill" Hitchcock keeps his use of these to a minimum. Emotion had to be conveyed through facial expression and gesture alone, something which must have appeared strange to British people in the twenties who generally believed in keeping a stiff upper lip and regarded gesticulating while talking as a foreign eccentricity. "Downhill", however, shows just how powerful silent film could be as a story-telling medium. The film's happy ending may seem sentimental today, but at the time "vice punished and virtue rewarded" was an established dramatic convention, and Roddy's misfortunes are due not to his vices but to an excess of virtue, which enables the cowardly Tim and the manipulative Julia to take advantage of his good nature. Once one gets used to the melodramatic acting techniques, one can appreciate the power of some of the performances here, especially from Ivor Novello (today better remembered as a musician and composer than as an actor) as Roddy, Annette Benson as the scheming Mabel and Isabel Jeans as Julia. The film makes compelling viewing for anyone with an interest in Hitchcock's work. 8/10

More
cstotlar-1
1928/01/07

If I have to see another character go downstairs, I swear I'll watch the film in reverse! The plot is quite basic - nothing really new: chump plus a couple of manipulative floozies equal his downward spiral. Hitchcock wisely didn't work consciously with symbolism for most of his career and this one makes me happy he didn't! There are a few good scenes here. The characters in the cab photographed from the outside during a rain worked quite well. The super-impositions were very well done and the collage of London with its usual turmoil in the streets made its point of "business as usual" effectively. There was some rather heavy over-acting by Novello near the end that can be painful to watch. The depiction of Paris seemed as French as the English music hall. Hitchcock was learning to fly with this but as of its release, he hadn't earned his wings yet.Curtis Stotlar

More
drednm
1928/01/08

I watched Alfred Hitchcock's DOWNHILL (1927) starring Ivor Novello. I thought this was a fascinating film although it's not very well regarded.Novello plays a wealthy Oxford student who stupidly takes the blame after a vindictive waitress points him out (his father is rich) as her seducer. The real seducer is his friend, but he takes the blame, assuming it will all blow over. But he gets expelled and sent home where his father pitches a fit and calls him a liar. Novello storms out of the house.Cast into the cruel world, Novello must find his own way. In a brilliant sequence, following an intertitle that announces "make believe" we see a well dressed Novello holding a cup of coffee, but as the camera pulls back we see that he is holding a tray and serving coffee to a flashy couple (Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter). Well at least he has a job! But then as the couple heads to the dance floor the camera pulls back again and we suddenly realize that, as the couple starts dancing, they are on a stage. The audience comes into view and a line of high-kicking dancers races out onto the stage.Jeans turns out to be a selfish woman involved with Hunter. There is never enough money. Novello becomes a hanger-on until he receives a telegram with news about an inheritance. Jeans quickly marries Novello and starts spending freely. Time passes. Jeans and Hunter are sitting in a lavish bedroom. She's endlessly sitting at dressing tables, admiring herself and her jewels. Novello comes home and find a pile of bills, an overdrawn notice from the bank, and Hunter in the closet. The apartment is in her name and he's thrown out into the cruel world.Next we find Novello as a taxi dancer in Paris. He seems to have a "manager" who sells his dances and possibly more. While he dances we see a middle-aged age woman (Violet Farebrother) sitting at a table. She can't take her eyes off him. She arranges for an introduction. He babbles away, telling her his sad story while her eyes frankly devour him. Amazing sequence. But as morning dawns and the blinds are raised, Novello finally see this tawdry world of drunks and dissolutes and once again goes out into the cruel world to Marseilles.Sick and broke, Novello is saved by a pair of sailors and put on a ship back to England after they find a returned letter. Do they think there will be a reward? During the voyage, Novello hallucinates and relives his past accounts with all the horrid women in his life. This is a beautifully done scene. Finally he arrives home.I cannot think of another film from this era where the male is the societal victim and who, through nobility, suffers as he descends to the depths at the hands of women. Novello is actually playing a twist on the many Ruth Chatterton roles where she follows this sort of journey to find redemption and/or death. Along with The Lodger, this may be Ivor Novello's best film performance.As for Hitchcock, there are many great scenes here and lots of symbolism as Novellos is seen on escalators and elevators going down, down, DOWN.

More