First the good news--we get a solid set of transfers of early Hitchcock with some minor and major classics early in his career. Studio Canal has done a nice job with these and while the transfers aren't scratch free, they look quite good given the age of the source material and quite a bit better than some of the earlier releases of public domain sources. This boxed set (once you open it) resembles an old bound script from the era. Inside you have all the movies included on three single sided discs. The outside has a photo of Hitch (which reminds me of a deathmask) from the Universal archive. ***

The first two films in the set "The Ring" and "The Manxman" were made the year after the success of "The Lodger" (which would been shelved when studio executives thought it a disaster. Luckily, Michael Bacon stepped in a man who championed Hitch early in his career and the film was a wild success). "Murder!" is an early talkie (sadly the German version isn't included. It would have been nice to see for comparison sake as it was shot with a different cast on the same sets). In the early days of film alternate versions were shot for other markets where they might be popular usually with a different director. Hitch spoke German since he worked early on in that country shooting films and absorbing much of the early German expressionist styles that he would reference throughout his career)so directed it himself. "The Skin Game" and "Rich and Strange" (the latter an early Hitchcock classic) are also included. ---

Image & Sound:

These films range from the late 20's to the early 30's so they are quite old. Lion's Gate has gone back to the surviving source prints that Studio Canal purchased a number of years. The prints look quite good although a bit more digital polish could have been applied to get rid of some of the analog imperfections. The audio varies. Some of these are silent films and the accompanying audio sound track fits in pretty well with the films. The sound film "Murder!" suffers from the imperfections of the time including some pops, clicks, etc. but overall sounds quite good. ---

The bad news is that we don't get any feature length commentary tracks by Hitchcock historians and film scholars (which is just as well if these things bore you). We do, however, get a new 15 minute featurette "Pure Cinema: The Birth of Hitchcock's Style" focusing on Hitchcock's early life, his collaboration with his wife Alma (who is often overlooked--we must remember that it was team Hitchcock collaborating which consisted of Hitch, his wife Alma and whomever their current favorite writer was)and the development of his early style. It features interviews with USC Hitchcock Professor Drew Casper (who wears waayy too noticable make up), director Peter Bogdanovich, Hitch's daughter and screenwriter/film historian Steve Haberman (who looks like he had his brows plucked and also wears a bit too much make up). We have a generous amount of clips from the set illustrating their points. I do wish that "The Lodger" had been included in this set but that's a pretty minor point (although honestly it does belong here as an example of his developing sense of style). ***

There's also a discussion about how Hitchcock shot and edited the films. Whenever there was an edit on the older sound films, for example, there would be a resulting pop from where the edit was made on the soundtrack. As a result Hitch developed a style where he wouldn't have to edit into multiple break downs of close ups, etc. if it was unnecessary. Perhaps that is one of reasons why Hitch developed the style of his sweeping camera dollys, and movements. It's fascinating to compare the silents to the talkies because there is a distinctive style that differs somewhat in the storytelling for these films. Hitch would use the language of "pure cinema" to communicate what he wanted in these cases borrowing what he had learned from studying Eisenstein, Murnau and other great silent film directors and early pioneers. He quickly incoporated what he had learned into a distinctive style all his own. ---

Final Words: