Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

robert-temple-1 At the age of 25, Alfred Hitchcock, who had been an assistant director to Michael Balcon, was given the chance to direct his first film, which was of course silent. It is very good and showed at once that he had talent. Assistant director on the film was a girl named Alma Reville, who was to become Hitchcock's wife and lifelong partner in all of his film projects. The film is based on a popular novel by 'Oliver Sandys', which was the pen name of a woman whose real name was Marguerite Jarvis, and who in this same year appeared as an actress under the name of Marguerite Evans in the comedy film STAGESTRUCK, with Gloria Swanson. The title of this film is the name of a music hall in London, where two girls are in the chorus together, and share a room in Brixton. The melodrama concerns the adventures of their lives and respective fates. The film was shot at Babelsburg Studios in Germany and had an international cast. The American actress Virginia Valli plays Patsy, the good girl of the two. And Jill, the girl who goes to the bad, is played by another American actress, Carmelita Geraghty. The German actor Karl Falkenberg plays the unpleasant and sinister Prince Ivan, who leads Jill astray. Falkenberg acted in 100 films between 1916 and 1936, after which he disappears from history. Probably he was Jewish, was banned from the screen by the Nazis, and then sent to a death camp. Possibly the best performance in the film is by British actor Miles Mander, who outdid Falkenberg by appearing in 107 films, between 1920 and 1947, including WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). In this film he plays a cad who married Patsy and then betrays her with a mistress and goes to pieces with drink and decadence. He delivers a very finely judged performance, and does not overact. Carmelita Geraghty is very convincing in her downward spiral into immorality, selfishness, and selling herself for fame and fortune. The film is not particularly creaky with age, and is well worth seeing.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "The Pleasure Garden" is a British/German co-production from 90 years ago and the only reason why this film is still somewhat known today I guess is because the man behind the camera was Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, in his mid-20s, with one of his earliest filmmaking efforts. He still had a long way to go to his best achievements, however. But as he was not the writer here, you cannot really blame him. The story wasn't particularly interesting. The best thing about the film was maybe the cute dog. Too bad he did not even appears in 5 scenes, even if he had the final shot. I cannot say I am familiar with anybody from the cast here, even if some of them have been prolific in film before and after this one. It is a silent (don't be fooled by the music), black-and-white film that, like so many other suffer from simply not enough intertitles to understand exactly what's going on, even if the dramatic finale was decent. Also like many other films from almost 100 years ago, this one got restored and there are several information in terms of the runtime. The version I saw was really short, barely made it beyond the 1-hour mark. Good thing though as it really wasn't a thrilling watch. Not recommended unless you're a Hitchcock completionist.

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.