Alfred Hitchcock Collectors Guide: Downhill (1927), Part 2

by Brent Reid
Brent Reid
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Restoration, home video and more Ivor Novello releases

  • Downhill restored: there are two versions, four transfer speeds and five scores!
  • Spoilt for choice: it’s very well represented on most official home video releases
  • Suffering in silence: However, some of them come with a caveat – and no music
  • Its star Ivor Novello is perhaps best known by his collaborations with Hitchcock
  • But his entertaining talkie performances will come as a happy revelation to fans

Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.

Downhill, Part 1: Production

L-R: Annette Benson, Robin Irvine and Ivor Novello in Downhill (1927, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

The Wrong Boy: Mabel unfairly fingers Roddy for the dastardly deed wot woz done to ‘er. Annette Benson, Robin Irvine and Ivor Novello.

Contents

Restoration

Ivor Novello in Downhill (1927, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

It’s about to hit the fan…

Ever since its première, Downhill had only been available in B&W but the 2012 Hitchcock 9 restoration, transferred at 20fps, revives its beautiful original tinting scheme. This includes an infamous, long-unseen lurid green sequence denoting mental and physical sickness. A few scenes that were never tinted remain in B&W.

“The original negative of Downhill does not survive so the restoration was based on two vintage nitrate prints – one from the BFI’s own collections and one on loan from the EYE Film Institute in the Netherlands. There was some compensation in working from original prints held as they had their original tinting and toning so that we have been able to restore the colour that Hitchcock used so expressively in his silent films.

Reproduction of the tones and tints found in three films, The Pleasure Garden, Downhill and The Lodger, has also constituted a major aspect of our restoration project. In the absence of scripts or other primary documentation, it appears that these are the only Hitchcock films which were released domestically in tinted and toned prints. Considerable pains were taken to determine the colour schemes of British release prints, and these have been followed in the restored print. As in the other Hitchcock restorations, a great deal of grading and digital clean up as well as the remaking of the intertitles, has had impressive results. New negatives of the restored film have been made for long term preservation and 35mm prints and DCPs made for exhibition.” – BFI programme notes

Timeline of Historical Film Colors: tinted and toned 1927 nitrate print

Downhill‘s restoration premièred on 20 September 2012 at the BFI Southbank, London, and the audience were serenaded by a new five-piece a cappella score composed by classically-trained UK beatboxer Shlomo. If that sounds like an awkward match, fear not: for the most part, it was entirely appropriate and actually surprisingly sympathetic and moving. Here’s an artist interview including the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, a glowing review and a selection of video clips from a later performance. For good measure here’s an informative review from Paul Joyce, prolific author of the consistently excellent ithankyou blog. Unfortunately, at this point in time Shlomo’s score looks fairly unlikely to ever show up on a commercial release. This is, like many other excellent new silents scores, owing to the relatively modest yet still-prohibitive cost of recording, mastering and licensing it.

A new piano score was also commissioned from John Sweeney, who first performed it live on 24 September 2012, also at the BFI Southbank, and numerous times since. He also completed a studio recording which is so far only available on the current DCP and, as seen below, the UK-restricted digital version and latest French discs.

Home video releases

Downhill aka C'est la vie (1927, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) French Elephant Films Blu-ray/DVD

French Elephant Films Blu-ray/DVD

Downhill’s restored version has had a HD release in four countries to date, even more than The Lodger. And it gets three newly recorded piano scores to boot, to add to the one it had just a few years prior. The older transfer used on all pre-restoration DVDs is in jolly (hockey sticks?) good shape but only B&W and runs at a slightly-too-fast 24fps, equating to 85min; 82min on PAL DVD with its additional 4% speed-up. More significantly though, unless indicated otherwise, its releases are scoreless.

Preserved transfer

Hannah Jones (standing) and Isabel Jeans in Downhill (dir. by Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)

Hannah Jones (standing) with Isabel Jeans contemplating a life of unearned luxury. Altogether: “Now, I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger…”

The overwhelming majority of quality silent film home video releases have professionally recorded custom scores but, very rarely, some are let out without any soundtrack whatsoever. Granted, home video editions of silents are a niche market, often with little to no profit involved and produced on a shoestring budget, but there’s really no excuse for not even including a relatively cheap and perfectly acceptable piano accompaniment. Hitch is a little unlucky in that some discs of his films – most of them for Downhill – have been released sans score, but they’re all listed so be guided accordingly. If you do acquire one of the scoreless DVDs and are casting around for suitable accompanying music, I recommend trying Mozart’s String Quartets; they’re truly sublime in any context but especially this one, and always work for me.

Of the only two scored pre-restoration DVDs, from France and Japan, the latter has a PAL-NTSC transfer and its jazz score isn’t entirely effective, often not even matching the onscreen action. But the orchestral score unique to two of the French PAL discs is highly recommended and one has the bonus of the only restored transfer of Waltzes from Vienna! However, back to the somebody boo-booed department: the French Universal 2012 reissue DVD sleeve claims it contains Juno and the Paycock as a bonus, but it’s actually identical to the previous 2007 disc. Nonetheless, both are absolute gems and an essential part of any serious Hitch fan’s collection.

Restored transfer

The restored transfer shows some differences between the three BDs. Criterion’s colours are noticeably deeper and more saturated than the French and Spanish. You’d never know without doing a side-by-side comparison but I give the latter two the edge, as Criterion’s richer palette comes at the slight expense of shadow detail. The BFI decided 20fps was the optimum speed for their restoration, equalling 105min. The French and Spanish adhere to it, while for some reason Criterion chose to run their transfer slightly slower, at 109min. Lastly, all three BDs have the different but equally adept new piano scores.

Isabel Jeans in Downhill (1927, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Isabel Jeans, about to do our twice-fallen hero a mischief.

However, Criterion’s Lodger disc (region A) easily wins overall by virtue of its extra film and copious extras, including a  booklet essay by critic Philip Kemp. As for the Euro BDs, Divisa (region B) has the ubiquitous “The Early Years” featurette (1999, 24min), a slideshow and several text-based extras. Elephant Films (region 0) has similar extras on all five of their Hitch BDs: the aforementioned “Early Years”, two film intro and Hitchcock 9 featurettes with Jean-Pierre Dionnet (both in French, 9min) and a short picture gallery. But the French BD also has unnecessary, unforgivable forced subs on the BD, though strangely they’re optional on the equivalent DVD, as with the other four in Elephant Films’ box set. Therefore, Spain narrowly comes out on top for the film itself. There are comparative screenshots of several Downhill transfers here and here.

Among the hordes of poor quality Hitchcock bootlegs to be avoided, there is a fourth BD (and DVD) from prolific pirates Indigo in Germany. They go by many names and methods, and here have ripped a 105min transfer of the tinted restoration from BD or a TV broadcast and stripped it to B&W, as this comparison bears out. Excepting the US Criterion listed above, also avoid any shoddy pirates on Amazon Prime, such as that also from Indigo.

Note that at the end of 2022, Downhill entered the US public domain only, 95 years after its original 1927 release. But there’s more to it than that. It only applies to unrestored B&W prints, not any of the preserved or restored, newly tinted and scored versions. In all cases, they meet the threshold of originality and easily qualify as derivative works with full-term copyrights. In the rest of the world, all versions of the film, restored or otherwise, remain copyrighted until at least 2050: Hitch’s 1980 death + 70 years.

More Ivor Novello on home video

Apart from Downhill, The Lodger and its remake, poor old Ivor hasn’t been too well served on home video, with only a few of his several dozen screen works available for viewing. It’s grimly appropriate for the man who, despite his many incredible achievements and inestimable contributions to British culture, is perhaps most noteworthy for having penned those immortal lines, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” I’m not kidding. As great as he is in both Hitchcocks, it’s a pity so few have seen him in any of his talkies in particular, as they’re where he really comes alive; you get a much stronger sense of his range and the talents that made him such a stage sensation in his day.

  • The Man Without Desire (1923) UK BFI Mediatheque/films
  • The White Rose (1923) US R0 DVD-R (Grapevine, 2012) – tinted w/custom score

These are all the legit viewing options I could track down of his films which are available; just avoid the numerous bootlegs of his copyrighted talkies, in particular the many US and Euro rip-offs of King’s Rhapsody starring Errol Flynn, which has only one official release to date.

I Lived With You came hot on the heels of Novello’s hit 1932 play and features most of its West End cast, including Isabel Jeans’ sister Ursula, plus a 14-year-old Ida Lupino. Riotously funny and sexually audacious, it is, in my not-so humble opinion, one of the best British films of the 1930s – get it!

Ivor Novello by Angus McBean, 1947

Ivor Novello by Angus McBean, 1947

Biographies:

 

Downhill, Part 1: Production

This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.

I started Brenton Film because I love film – quelle surprise! The silent era, 1930s and 1940s especially get my literary juices flowing, so you'll see a lot about those. For more, see the About page and read this before emailing.

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