Jamaica Inn (1939)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) I like Alfred Hitchcock and I like Charles Laughton, but if my understanding of Jamaica Inn’s troubled production history is correct, the on-screen result is what remains after a spectacular clash of egos. As the story goes, Hitchcock took Daphne Du Maurier’s novel (the first of three adaptations of her stories, followed by Rebecca and The Birds), but had trouble with Laughton-the-producer-and-actor, who wanted to transform a dreary gothic novel into something funnier, more eccentric and not quite some faithful to the original. The result is, for lack of a better word, often weird. The still-unnerving premise (an innocent woman discovering that she’s in the middle of a village of marauders, attracting ships to a treacherous coast where the ships run aground, then, killing the survivors and selling the cargo) runs into a semi-comic performance by Laughton and bizarre touches of humour. The film can’t quite make up its mind about whether it has revelations to tell us, and the ending just gets more and more ludicrous, as the heroine is kidnapped by a lusty villain because… well, there’s no real good explanation, since his plan is untenable from the get-go. This is really not top-tier Hitchcock, and probably not second-tier either—while the film was a commercial success and stands as the last of Hitchcock’s British period before going to Hollywood with Rebecca, it’s weaker than many of Hitchcock’s other 1930s films. Aside from the always-interesting Laughton, special mention should be made of the heroine being played by Maureen O’Hara in one of her early leading roles. The 2014 Cohen Media Group restoration of the film is nothing short of terrific—great image quality and clear sound make this a joy to watch — if it wasn’t for the content!