Riff-Piraten (1939)

Riff-Piraten: Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With Charles Laughton, Horace Hodges, Hay Petrie, Frederick Piper. In Cornwall, 1819, a young woman discovers she’s living near a gang of criminals who arrange shipwrecks for profit.

“While Hitchcocku0026#39;s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurieru0026#39;s u0026quot;Jamaica Innu0026quot; has some interesting features, overall it deserves its reputation as one of the great directoru0026#39;s lesser efforts. While it has some good moments and a good performance by Maureen Ou0026#39;Hara, it is rather clunky and often implausible.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story holds some possibilities. At the beginning, we find out that there is an old inn along the coast of Cornwall, which serves as the meeting place for a gang of criminals, who deliberately cause shipwrecks and then rob and kill the survivors. Ou0026#39;Hara is the niece of the innkeepers, who comes to stay with them and then gradually discovers the innu0026#39;s sinister secrets. This gives rise to a melodramatic series of chases, escapes, and showdowns in the inn and along the nearby seacoast.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eUnfortunately, the pacing is quite irregular and often too slow, and some of the more fast-paced scenes sometimes seem implausible. Just as one example, there are too many times when someone slips away solely because whoever is doing the chasing forgets to look in a rather obvious place. There are also not enough interesting characters. Ou0026#39;Hara is good, and Charles Laughton is entertaining as Sir Humphrey. But Laughton over-plays his role for all it is worth, and he swallows up most of the other characters. There are some pretty good actors in the rest of the cast, who just donu0026#39;t get very much to do.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere are still some interesting developments, and a couple of decent twists. Hitchcock fans will probably still want to see u0026quot;Jamaica Innu0026quot; at least once. But it is hardly one of the directoru0026#39;s better films, and not really good enough to be of more general interest.”