Clevercell Very disappointing...

Wordiezett So much average

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

TheLittleSongbird The Pleasure Garden is notable for being the first complete film of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest and most influential directors in film, so it is one of great historical interest. It's not one of his best, there is somewhat of a primitive look, some of the pacing does get pedestrian in the middle and the scripting at times suffers from being overly talky. Hitchcock has definitely done worse though, and The Pleasure Garden is a decent film. Even for such an early effort, Hitchcock's direction does shine through with great use of camera angles and directorial flourishes. No signs of phoning in. The story is intelligently explored, the script serves the actors and Hitchcock competently(though of course there have been much better scripts since) and while the pacing is uneven the beginning and ending are solid enough. The acting give their all, maybe with some over-playing here and there, but there is signs of effort. All in all, a quite decent first complete film, though Hitchcock definitely went on to much better since. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Interesting composure and camera-work, and the dog, are about all this one has going for it. Interesting, slightly voyeuristic opening shot of dancers pouring down a spiral staircase, in sepia-tinted brown. A bit of mild, subtle humour as we see a bored man among the first row of otherwise thrilled patrons at the revue. Top hat'd Hamilton smoking a cigar while standing in front of a 'Smoking Prohibited' sign. People coming home to find their dog has chewed up their clothes These bits show the director already having a sense of humour, and playing with his audience, but not yet really knowing what to do with the fairly uninvolving story present, a sort of behind-the-scenes melodrama at a revue; infidelity, and the murder at the beach house. Surprisingly dull and lackluster results, considering the way it all sounds, although the climax does have a little bit of action to it. A lot of the sets are well done, as is the director's humorous flair in filming some of them, but quite frankly, the plot is just boring and uneven. Were it not for the fact that this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's first films as director (it is his first solely-directed feature film, but third film to be released) , no one would remember, or care about, this one.

boblipton Looking at Hitchcock's early pictures, one struggles to see signs of his future greatness, like looking through every manger for the baby with the halo. But this, the first complete Hitchcock movie, shows no signs of his future greatness. He is clearly a journeyman director, some one who shows promise, but sent to Berlin for his final exam.On the plus side, this movie starts off surprisingly well, with a snappy, American-paced chorines-on-the-town plot. If they had cast Marion Davies and Marie Prevost in this, it would be typical, if rather underwritten. The start moves fast, plot points pop up, and suddenly we take a turn and the story descends into melodrama.Fairly typical of Hitchcock, you might say and you would be right, but he hasn't got any sense of what his chosen symbols are -- both leads are brunettes, which will come as a surprise to anyone who knows Hitchcock's taste for icy blondes. The symbolic items are standard and not particularly shocking -- Virginia Valli's wedding-bed deflowering is indicated by an apple with a large chunk bitten out of it -- and the actors are not really up to their jobs.Hitchcock was never a great director of actors but a great director of scenes. By 1927 his visual flair got his bosses to invest in great actors for his pictures, starting with Ivor Novello for THE LODGER. But here, everyone is.... at best, adequate, with Miles Mander very stagy and whoever plays his native lover -- still miscredited in the IMDb as Nita Naldi -- seemingly brain-damaged.There are a couple of interestingly composed visual glosses: the door that Mander must go through looks like a Turkish harem door and the decoration on either side differs dramatically; on one side is life, on another death. But this is UFA, with great cameramen and all the technicians who made great expressionist fare like CALIGARI and modernist masterpieces like Lang's work ready and eager to work.... and there's none of that here.I find it hard to give this an exact rating: the great start is sunk by the foolishness of the ending, and Hitchcock at the the start of his career is not the great film maker he would be in another thirty years -- or even four. But it is Hitchcock, and therefore demands our attention, so I'll give it a good mark for that.But if it weren't Hitchcock's first film, no one would care. It probably wouldn't even still be in existence.

Andrew Nixon The Pleasure Garden is the first film that Alfred Hitchcock directed to completion. It's a nice look into the earliest directorial thoughts and techniques of the master. Even in this earliest film, we can see signs of what would become some of his signature trademarks. I enjoyed some of the point of view shots early in the film with the blurred view of the man looking through his monocle as well as the gentleman looking through the binoculars at the show girls legs. There is also a spiral staircase in the opening of this movie. Not that it was used like the staircase in Vertigo, but it made me smile thinking of how important that would be in his later film. The story deals with the idea of infidelity. Jill (Carmelita Geraghty) is an aspiring dancer who gets engaged to Hugh (John Stuart) who has to leave for work overseas. Patsy (Virginia Valli), who has helped Jill get her start, starts to worry about Jill keeping her promise to wait for Hugh. Jill's career is taking off and she begins to fool around with other guys. Patsy marries Levett (Miles Mander), Hugh's friend who also goes overseas to work with Hugh. Unlike Jill, Patsy remains true to her husband, thinking only of being with him. She receives a letter that her husband has taken ill and scrapes up the money to go be with her husband in his time of need. When she arrives, she finds that he has taken to drinking and island women. That's when the trouble ensues. I enjoyed Hitch's first film. It's a little slow starting, but picks up pace as it goes along. I liked seeing Cuddles, the dog, thrown in for a little comic relief to contrast the seriousness of the film, which of course is another of Hitchcock's trademarks. There was also a nice, subtle score by Lee Erwin, that fit the film well.*** (Out of 4)