Light-hearted
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Light-hearted |
| Original title | Easy Virtue |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1928 |
| length | 79 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script | Eliot Stannard |
| production |
Michael Balcon for Gainsborough Pictures |
| camera | Claude McDonnell |
| cut | Ivor Montagu |
| occupation | |
| |
Leichtlebig ( Easy Virtue ) is a 1928 film by Alfred Hitchcock . It is based on a play by Noël Coward .
The film was first released in Germany in August 2013, where it was shown during the International Silent Film Festival .
action
Larita Filton, an attractive woman, is on trial for divorce from her husband, Abrey Filton, a drink-loving man portrayed as violent. Flashbacks reveal that a young artist named Claude Robson made aggressive advances during her portrait sessions. When her husband saw this, a violent argument broke out between the two men. Ultimately, Larita Filton is accused of adultery and also convicted.
After the scandalous divorce, she travels to the south of France to live beyond public attention. During a tennis game, she is accidentally hit in the head by a misdirected ball and meets the young John Whittaker, a man from a good family, who falls in love with her. John deliberately doesn't want to know anything about Larita's past life, even though she addresses this. The two get married and move to England to live with John's family in their property.
John's mother, Mrs. Whittaker, is suspicious and hostile from the start. She is disappointed that her son did not marry her favorite Sarah. While at the beginning John still demands of his mother to respect his wife, he is increasingly convinced by her that it was a mistake to marry Larita. John's sister eventually spots a clue in the newspaper clarifying that Larita was the former Mrs. Filton. Her husband is irritated, Larita stands by her past.
The mother wants to avoid a public scandal at the party scheduled for the evening in the house and expects Larita to stay away. However, contrary to what was desired, Larita makes a big appearance. During the festival she decides to divorce her husband. She only attends the trial in secret. When she is recognized as she is leaving the courthouse and is stormed by photographers, she says: "Shoot! There is nothing left to kill." (Shoot! There's nothing left to kill.)
background
Hitchcock's last job for Michael Balcon was light- hearted and a financial failure. Hitchcock once again thematized his favorite motif of guilt and atonement and varied the story of his previous film Downwards by swapping the roles of man and woman, only this time without a happy ending.
Hitchcock used this film to try out manual and trick-technical subtleties. He experimented with extreme camera settings, with apertures and cuts, in order to get by with as few subtitles as possible. He worked meticulously on visual tricks.
In a scene typical of Hitchcock's visual style, John Lorita proposes marriage over the phone. You neither see him nor her and you don't hear (or read) a syllable. You only see the operator who is listening and observes the course and the result of the conversation by means of her facial expressions. With such ideas, Hitchcock broke all established norms of film dramaturgy in England.
In Leichtlebig the dominant mother appears for the first time in her destructive form, whose nature is determined by taking possession, distrust and manipulation. Hitchcock will vary this figure again and again over the decades.
literature
- Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky: Alfred Hitchcock and his films (= Goldmann 10201 Goldmann magnum. Citadel film books ). Edited by Joe Hembus . Goldmann, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 (Original title: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. ).
Web links
- Easily in the Internet Movie Database (English)