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Truly Dreadful Film

Sorry, this movie sucks

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

For a silent film, it is pretty good. If a drama can make you consider moving to the edge of your seat, it must have a somewhat compelling story. This film is definitely imperfect; one of the main characters is just dense, to the extent that you can't help but roll your eyes at times. Nevertheless, I found myself on multiple occasions becoming genuinely engaged, interested in the fate of the characters, and even impatiently anticipating the outcome of different events throughout the story. Not a movie I am looking forward to watching again (there wasn't anything to make it really exceptional or unforgettable), but it wasn't bad either, especially considering how old it is.

This silent film is a drama. No frills. You could perform this on a stage with minimal props.Hitchcock takes this simple story, and performs "cinema" with it.I am not one who easily watches drama. I fidget and yawn. Hitch must have known that many people do this. He uses the camera in a masterful fashion.There are five characters listed as main characters, but actually only four are featured much-the romantic triangle and the girl's father.At first, we're led to think the best friend is diabolical, and in later films, he would be depicted that way. Here, however, he is a very three dimensional character, in love with his best friend's girl.We get very good imagery, very good backdrops, and very good camera work to tell a basic story. It moves briskly, and you won't be looking at your watch.This is not only exceptionally good drama, but exceptionally good cinema. A combination of reality and magic.

This picture starts out as a light-hearted affair but becomes deadly serious and takes a nasty turn midway through. Two men are friends since childhood and are in love with the same girl. Pete is the doofus fisherman, Phil is a successful lawyer and Kate is the daughter of the local innkeeper. Kate's father rejects Pete as a suitor because he is penniless, so Pete goes off to make his fortune, making the fatal mistake of asking Phil to 'take care of ' Kate until his return.From here on "The Manxman" turns into a pretty powerful picture and builds to a crescendo at the finale. This is one of Hitchcock's darker pictures and I can't think of one darker to compare it to. There is no happy ending here - quite the opposite, in fact. If there is a flaw in the film it is in the casting. Malcolm Keen, as Phil, is too old and Anny Ondra, as Kate, is too young - she looks about twelve and is very small. They used to call this type a 'gamin'. On the other hand,Carl Brisson, as Pete, is perfect and is the star of the picture.I thought it was one of Hitchcock's best efforts. It transcends the soap opera genre and is a tragedy in its truest sense.

By 1929, Hitchcock was becoming quite the storyteller, but he wasn't the master of film-making just yet. Like many directors of his age, he started out making silent films and taking whatever plots and premises that would come his way. 1929's "The Manxman" was Hitchcock's last silent film and I think it's his most rich and interesting silent film. The story is another love-triangle that was popular in the era that this motion picture was made. And although the premise of this kind of movie is somewhat familiar, I did find "The Manxman" to be fairly interesting, if somewhat drawn out.Acting by the cast was exceptionally well. Gorgeous silent movie actress Anny Ondra was very good as the girl who finds herself the embodiment of affection of two men she's fond of. Malcolm Keen and Carl Brisson were also very strong in their roles. And as silly-sounding as a story like this is, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Enough to take it seriously.Now at two hours, "The Manxman" is a bit slow, maybe too much for its own good. Like a lot of Hitchcock's early-career films, it's a decent movie, but not a great one. It won't linger on in your memory forever like the masterpieces that Hitchcock would make later in his career. But hey, everybody has to start out somewhere.