Mary

I am never entirely decided which out of John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock should be regarded as the most hugely over-rated director of all time. Sometimes I tend one way, sometimes the other.

It is not that Hitchcock did not make some very fine films; evidently he did. But he made some rather poor films too, particularly at the beginning and during the long end of his career. And even some of his good films are in doubtful taste and overly reliant on trademark gimmicks. The sycophantic attitude adopted by his admirers (the gullible idolator François Truffaut en tête) bear witness as much as anything to to his dominant personality and extraordinary talents as a self-publicist.

Neither the 1930 British version of this film nor the German version (shot simultaneously but only released in 1931) are very good. According to one reviewer the Germans would have liked more changes and this I can well believe. Hitchcock, who had learned most of what he knew from German film-makers really does not take advantage of the opportunity to be more adventurous in his cinematography and mise en scène in the way that marks the films of the great German directors up to this time (a golden age soon alas to be robbed of its glitter by the folly and philistinism of one Herr Hitler). Using German technical skills, he could have made a much superior version of this film.

Some changes the Germans did get. The British version is very seriously by the extremely unpleasant racist and homophobic tone of its conclusion (the villain being very clearly marked as a half-caste pansy to be ostracised on both accounts). As, to my astonishment - how protective people are of their icons! - only one reviewer to date seems to have pointed out, these unpleasant elements are removed in the German version. The character still works as an acrobat en travesti but the notion that he is homosexual (derived from the Dane novel) is hardly there at all and his motive for murder is no longer to conceal that he had "black blood" as in the English version (a notion that did not horrify the German public who, even under Hitler and whatever Hitler may have thought of it, gave a hugely warm and enthusiastic welcome to the athlete Jesse Owens five years later as Owens himself would testify sardonically on his return to a segregated USA. In this version Fane is simply an ex-convict wishing to conceal his criminal past.

It is easy to read history backwards in the manner of the egregious Siegfried Kracauer and forget that the Weimar period in Germany was in fact notable for its broad-mindedness (films treating homosexuality with sympathy such as Oswald's Anders als die Andern - which is also a plea for a change in the law - Dreyer's Michaêl or Dieterle's Geschlecht in Fesseln simply could not have been made at all in Britain at this time) and its multiculturalism. When the anti-semitic British short-story Saki had imagined a German invasion of Britain in his 1913 novel When William Came, what he feared most was not militarism or autocracy but the spread of a "cosmopolitan" culture (typically a euphemism for "jew" at the time) that would undermine the British identity.

Regarding Hitchcock and race, how many African American faces can you recall seeing in all the films that "the Master" made in the US, a period that included the life and death of Martin Luther King, the Civil Right movement, the Johnsonian legislation that transformed US society, the heyday of Mohamed Ali, the Black Panther movement?

So these important changes to this film are a reminder that as late as 1931 racism and homophobia that was perfectly acceptable in Britain was considered inappropriate in Germany. Two years later, alas, and both German state and cinema would be in the hands of suicidal and homicidal fanatics. Quel gachis!

It is late night when the dwellers of a street hear a scream in the apartment of the actress Mary Baring (Olga Tschechowa). A police officer arrives, and the neighbors see Mary dazed and confused, with blood on her clothes and on a poker, and the body of her colleague Ellen Moore on the floor. An empty bottle of brandy is on the table and Mary is in shock with no recollection of what happened. The drunken Mr. Moore says that Mary and Ellen were rivals in the theater and the police take Mary to the precinct. There is a trial, and the jurors believe Mary is guilty, but the famous actor Sir John Menier (Alfred Abel) believes she is not guilty. However, he is not able to change the position of the other jurors and is forced to change his vote to guilty. Mary is sentenced to the gallows, but Sir John decides to conduct his own investigation to prove that Mary is innocent.

"Mary" (1931) is a German spoken remake of "Murder!" (1930) that was shot simultaneously on the same sets of "Murder!" by Alfred Hitchcock with a German-speaking cast. The plot is interesting, about a murder and the woman accused and considered guilty by the jurors. There is one moment, when Sir John Menier exposes his opinion, that seems to be the inspiration to "12 Angry Men" (1957) when only one juror disagrees from the others. The real killer is a weird guy, wearing a dress to perform at the circus. After watching "Mary", I have finally finished to see or see again all the Alfred Hitchcock features and written a review in IMDb for each one. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Mary"

This perfunctory German version of MURDER, filmed at the same time on the same sets but with a mostly different cast, is 28 minutes shorter than the English version! It leaves out all of the touches that make the English version enjoyable, and also leaves out some of the clues that lead to the murderer. Some of the things left out are: the jury member who hasn't a clue; the jury foreman having difficulty getting the ballots in the right piles; the jury filing out from the jury room into the court and Sir John waiting before getting up and joining them; the servant bringing the radio into the bathroom, and the colloquy with the servant at that point; the interior monologue is much shorter; dialogue in the scene immediately after is shorter (also, the bathroom and subsequent scene are sequenced wrong so that it seems he's shaving again after he finished); the landlady isn't present when the couple get the call from Sir John, and so the byplay about them owing the rent is not there; their frantic dressing and spiffing up for the Sir John visit; the shot of the stage manager's feet in a super-soft carpet, showing what it feels like to him; the scene where they look at the parlor with landlady is much shorter (and comes after scene where they look at her bedroom); tricking the landlady by using a high-pitched voice; Hitchcock's appearance in the street; tipping the theatre manager after they inspect the theatre; the scene with all the kids is much shorter, with the cat under the covers eliminated (same kids, though); the kids don't sit on the trunk, so the dialogue about the policeman's uniform in the trunk must not be there; the striking overhead shot of Mary in her cell, and the shadow of the noose; Sir John's scene with Mary is shorter, colder, and they don't talk about the theatre at the end; the scene of Sir John and the stage manager in the circus audience, where they talk about trapping the murderer with a Hamlet-like play is much shorter; when the murderer hangs himself, there's a somewhat more dramatic sound editing, perhaps to cover up the fact that he doesn't make a very good noose; the murderer carried out on a stretcher; the sequence of Sir John and Mary in the train is shorter; and the shot of the characters on stage at the end. Some of the jokes are still there but presented in so rudimentary a fashion that one would hardly notice. For example, when Sir John notices that his guest is using a small spoon for the soup, he does the same, and when he puts his martini olive on the tray, the guests don't know what to do with theirs; both these incidents still occur but with no reactions from the actors to point up the gags. Abel looks a lot like Marshall, which is very disconcerting because that British upper-class attitude that informs every aspect of the English version is completely lacking. The stage manager is an expressionless nonentity in this version. It's a second-hand, second-rate copy all through. One can hardly believe Hitchcock himself directed this totally lacking, colorless run-through of his delightful MURDER. You may never get a chance to see this one, which may frustrate Hitchcock completists, but, really, there's absolutely no reason to see it, even if you only understand German! See MURDER a second time instead.

If you only speak German, you should watch this version. If you speak English, you should just watch Alfred Hitchcock's film Murder! (1930) because it's exact same movie, using the exact same sets and plot, just with different actors.

For Hitchcock completists only, this German-language version of the same director's Murder! tells the same story on the same sets, but with different cast, as a juror questions the guilty verdict he helped come to.

A few mildly amusing visual flairs are present here: jurors seated around a circular table. The camera pans along and we see a first juror held deep in thought; the next several are listening with rapt attention; until we arrive at one man who is clearly bored to tears with it all; a mild joke which was thrown in to the German version, not in the UK version. Brief glimpses (again) of cross-dressing, which Hitch later went back to, in a big way, with Psycho.

Some early quick cuts are surprising, eleven cuts in a three seconds-long scene at the twenty three minute mark. Most unconventional at the time.

Overall the movie is watchable, but not very involving, partly at least due to its lax pacing, and a verbose screenplay. Like its UK counterpart, however, it does pick up for its memorable climax.