Watch The Skin Game For Free

Brilliant and touching

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Aside from an auction scene that's rather ahead of its time, there isn't really anything worthwhile here. Rather typically of an early sound film, it's so stilled, talky and set-bound that it's hard to keep interest for more than a few minutes at a time. Even though sound film had been commercially widespread for almost three years at the time, The Skin Game still suffers from garbled dialogue and conspicuous periods of silence. The sets are pretty bad, especially the ones used for the backseat of a car and really breaks the sense of immersion.The nouveau rich versus the old aristocracy plot isn't all that interesting either, and plays out like a standard class conflict melodrama for the most part. Edmund Gwenn, a common sight in early Hitchcock films, gives the only really believable performance but even he struggles to leave much of an impression thanks to the numerous technical issues. The rest of the cast ranges from bad to mediocre. I'd only recommend this film for Hitchcock fanatics, there just isn't enough here that's worthwhile for anyone else to spend their time on.

THE SKIN GAME is a superbly written Galsworthy play, pitting the landed gentry against the unscrupulous and upcoming entrepreneur, both fighting over a piece of land and its future.Except for a handful of clever camera and editing tricks (Hitchcock's trademark thus far in his career), this is for the most part a very crudely photographed and amateurishly edited sound film. There is no tension and interest in the proceedings is purely academic, when the audience should be gripped from beginning to end.Acting honors go to stage veteran Helen Haye as the matriarch, Amy Hillcrist, and Edmund Gwenn, as Hornblower, the grasping factory owner. Watching them lock horns is like watching Clinton and Trump fighting for their own highly diverse ways of life.Jill Esmond is of interest mainly due to her being Olivier's first wife (before Vivien Leigh) and rarely seen by USA audiences. Her performance is a bit mannered and she hasn't much to do as the ingénue. (Oddly enough Leigh was a bit player, visible in one scene, in Hitch's next film, RICH AND STRANGE.)The clever bits: contrasting the two young heirs with back to back shots depicting their arrivals home, she on horseback down an avenue of trees, he in a motor car towards a modern home; a montage of sound and close-ups, using overlapping dialogue and dog barking; the attempted foreclosure being sound alone, as we stand outside the cottage; pullback from the land in question as it becomes a photograph (a technique Hitch used previously in CHAMPAGNE), the boring auction details being read so softly as to be inaudible; the continuous movement of the camera during the auction as a point of view uninterrupted by cuts; the accusing face repeatedly zooming forward from the crowd.My print ran 1:18:35, while IMDb variously times it at 78 and 85 minutes.To sum up, an excellent play, for the most part flatly presented with a few cinematic tricks. Hardly top drawer film making, but for the most part enjoyable.

Not your typical Hitchcock Movie but it cannot be denied His flourishes that make this Filmed Stage Play more than its Source Material. It is a strong Story Socially commenting on Industrial intrusion into Virgin Territory and the displacement of the Lower Classes. The Writing makes its point Dramatically and it is a Timeless Tale from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.Then there's Movie Man Hitch who will not be denied some Fun and Artmanship and it is quite evident on a number of occasions in the Film that this is being Crafted and not just Played Out. The Camera Special Effects come alive at times and elevates this from the Stage and onto the Screen.There is Irony and much Pathos here along with some thought provoking Societal Traditions and implied, but not always a Living Moral Code. These types of things would emerge now and then in Hitch's Movies, but were hardly ever Central to, or the Motivation of the Plot. But in this early Work He was bound by Contract so He took this and made it His own.Worth a view for more than just Hitchcock completest. This has admittedly dated Technology and Acting Style but is nonetheless Good, early Sound, British Movie Making and the Story is anything but Time Stamped. Not a Classic, but Classical in many ways. Underrated.

In one of Hitchcock's slowest moving films, we see the tense interaction between two feuding families with different plans for the future of their community. There is a piece of land at the center of the dispute, which one family wants to use to preserve a life of family and tradition, and the opposing family wants to use to build a scenery-killing but productive factory.The film is based on a play and is not only extremely slow moving, but Hitchcock, with the exception of only a few scenes, simply points and shoots throughout the majority of the film. In the film's defense, the script is exceptional, but the problem is that the film is a technical mess, with the sound quality coming and going with such extremes that at times no audible dialogue can be heard at all. You can catch the crackling pace of the script but there are so many scenes where the film drags almost to a stop and Hitchcock does little to make up for it.The pace picks up slightly when the scandal involving the daughter in law comes in, but compared to what we have come to expect from Hitchcock, both before and after this point in his career, cause this one to fall pretty low on the relevance scale. A curiosity piece for Hitchcock fans and completists, though.