The Skin Game
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Year Released: 1931
Rating: 3.0
Even Hitch on auto-pilot can (sometimes) squeeze out something half-decent. It's the subject matter of this that piques my interest, as the battle between two families (Old Money vs. New Money, Preserving and Respecting Nature vs. Annihilating It) over land brings about their own ruin and drives one young lady - with a dodgy past - to kill herself out of shame (odd today, as no one's ashamed of anything, and even sex scandal videos are a form of self-promotion). It isn't the Master in top creative form - there aren't any real technical innovations - and the (single) camera tends to lazily drift from face to face, but the simple message - and disdain for the well-off - by John Galsworthy comes through, with the skin game representing both the nasty business practices of the rich and (quite literally) the business of prostitution.
