Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

bkoganbing John Galsworthy best known for writing the mammoth epic The Forsyte Saga also did plays and among them is The Skin Game. After debuting in London the play ran on Broadway for the 1920-21 season for 176 performances. In the original work there was a great deal of reference to the late World War which has been removed from this production. That probably wasn't a good idea since I think it gutted a lot of Galsworthy was trying to convey.Other than the fact that it was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in his early talkie period, The Skin Game would have been forgotten ages ago. It concerns a pair of rich, but very different families. The Hillcrists with C.V. France as patriarch are an old landed gentry clan while the Hornblowers and that's a Dickensian name if there ever was one are newly minted rich. Edmund Gwenn is looking to buy land to build factories and expand, while France wants a quiet contemplative life in the country. That's the recipe for a family feud that spells tragedy for one of the members as a business dispute gets ugly and personal real fast.The film is more Galsworthy than Hitchcock just as Hitch's other early effort Juno And The Paycock is more Sean O'Casey than something you would associate with the master of suspense. Hitchcock did better with Galsworthy than O'Casey in that he made it more than a photographed stage play, still the subject matter is so dated. Some oblique references to the British political situation and class struggle would have no meaning for a modern American audience.

MartinHafer This old Alfred Hitchcock film is extremely tough to watch, as the film (even by 1931 standards) has very poor sound and the print is pretty bad as well. Being a public domain film, it's been pretty much neglected. On top of this, the film's style is very old fashioned compared to products made by Hollywood at this same time. The simple fact is that the United States was leading the world in film technology at this point and other countries' films lacked clear and effective sound. Interestingly enough, the UK was pretty advanced in this area, as in some counties (such as Japan and China), silent films would be made well through the 1930s. However, despite this and despite the film starting very slowly, it's well worth seeing--but you need to be patient.The film begins with two rich families--the Hillcrists and the Hornblowers. The Hillcrists are "old money"--a bit snobbish and clinging to their ideals of class. The Hornblowers are "new money"--newly rich, not particularly sophisticated and angry that the old money treat them like riff-raff. In fact, the head of the family (Edmund Gwen) seems determined to teach the Hillcrists a lesson by buying up the land around their estate and turning it into factories and cheap housing! The Hillcrists, in a desperate move, send out investigators to see if there is any dirt they can use to stop the Hornblowers. Unfortunately, the Hillcrests ARE able to find some lovely dirt but despite this, the film ends in unexpected tragedy.The film, despite having terrible cinematography (the zooming shots are just horrible, heads cut off in many scenes and a jerky camera) and dull pacing, the film has such a strong story that it's well worth seeing. This is especially true since the film ends so well--leaving the viewer amazed at how well all the story elements work together. Sadly, this film could really use a remake--it's just too well written to be forgotten.

Michael_Elliott Skin Game, The (1931) ** (out of 4)Melodrama from the early Hitchcock filmmography was adapted from a popular stage play, which had previously been filmed in 1921. The film tells the story of rival families who see different futures for their small community. One wants to use the land to move the poor people out so that they can build factories on their land. The other wants to keep the land free so that farmers can raise their families in peace. Hitchcock gave an interview later in his career where he pretty much turned his back on the film saying he forced into making it and there wasn't anything else to be said. That pretty much says all there is to know but old Hitch might have been a tad bit harsh as there are a couple good moments scattered around. There's one masterpiece sequence, which could rank right up there with various classic scenes that we'd get in his future films. Early on there's an auction for the land and this sequence lasts a pretty long time and we get to see various people bidding on it. All the people have their own plans for the land so this helps build some suspense because we know what's at stake. The way Hitchcock keeps the camera moving on the bids and the editing make this a very effective scenes. The rest of the movie is pretty bland as there's way too much talk and none of it is very interesting. The movie features a couple good performances but they can't keep the film afloat as it's rather clear the director wasn't cut out for the material.

Steffi_P The early 30s were a time of experimentation for Hitchcock, with theme as much as with technique. After discovering that the crime thriller was his forte with Blackmail and Murder!, his at the time zigzagging career lead him to attempt a talkie drama adapted from a fairly mediocre stage play concerning a feud between the families of an aristocrat and an entrepreneur.In attempting a straight ahead drama without any major thriller elements, Hitchcock nevertheless employs all the techniques he had been perfecting in his earlier crime pictures – dynamic editing, a focus on the psychology of guilt and fear, as well as some of the sound techniques of his previous talkies. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. He tries to inject some tension into an auction scene with whip pans and quick editing, which is a fairly good display of technique but we don't really care enough about the outcome of the bidding to get really drawn in at this point.For some of the more talky scenes, Hitchcock tries to move beyond the story's theatrical roots by focusing on reactions and having dialogue take place off screen. This helps to give weight to the second half of the film. In particular, Hitch's dwelling on the face of Chloe, the innocent victim of the feud, makes the audience feel sympathy for her character, which in turn makes the climactic scenes work and prevents them from slipping into ridiculous melodrama (which the stage version may well have done). For some of the more subdued scenes, Hitchcock preserves an unbroken take but still takes the focus on and off different characters by smoothly dollying in and out. This same method would be used by Laurence Olivier when he began directing Shakespeare adaptations in the 1940s. However, too many of the dialogue scenes in The Skin Game are simply a lot of panning as the camera tries to keep up with extravagant theatrical performances.This is a fairly good go at theatrical drama for Hitchcock, but it was made at a time when he was coming to realise not only his strength in the suspense thriller, but his weakness in (and utter distaste for) every other genre. He was probably beginning to look at this kind of project as a rather dull waste of time, and definitely at odds to his sensibility. As an example, this is one of the very few Hitchcock pictures to take advantage of natural beauty, and yet he makes this aspect a victim of his playful irony, by taking his most beautiful countryside shot, then pulling out to reveal it is merely a tiny picture on a sale poster, surrounded by Hornblower and his cronies laughing over the deal they have just made.The Skin Game is rarely gripping, but at times it is powerful, and in any case it has a short enough running time to prevent it from getting boring. Hitchcock however was looking now to have more fun with crime and suspense, and this sense of the dramatic (not to mention a sense of genuine sympathy for the victim) would not return until his later Hollywood pictures, and even then only occasionally.