As loath as I am to mark a Hitchcock films as “not worth consuming,” I can’t help it.

This was the last movie Hitchcock made in England before coming to Hollywood to make Rebecca with David O. Selznick – like this movie, based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel – and I can’t help but feel his heart just wasn’t in it.

The heroine, if you can call her that, is the most helpless leading character I’ve ever seen in a Hitchcock movie. She has her clever moments, but she’s much too submissive, a quality that reaches it’s height whenever she’s around her sister’s husband, a brute of a villain who is just as violent as she is timid.

Another problem I had was with the plot. Hitch raised the same point in his interview with Francois Truffaut:

It was completely absurd, because logically the judge should have entered the scene only at the end of the adventure. He should have carefully avoided the place and made sure he was never seen in the tavern…Realizing how incongruous it was, I was truly discouraged, but the contract had been signed. Finally, I made the picture, and although it became a box-office hit, I’m still unhappy over it.

Interestingly enough, this is one of the few films in which Hitch doesn’t make a cameo. Somewhat of a disappointment. He would have looked hilarious dressed up as one of the upper crust, ruffles and all.