Downhill (1927)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello) and Tim Wakeley (Robin Irvine) are best friends at an English prep school, Tim only able to attend on scholarship. In addition to the connections he can make through his wealthy family, Roddy is considered the star of the class, especially on the rugby pitch, and the one with the brightest future. Things change when Roddy is purposefully accused falsely of an impropriety. While he denies it, he does not name the actual perpetrator, Tim, knowing that Tim would never be able to recover. Roddy makes a promise to Tim never to divulge this information. Beyond the immediate expected action of being expelled from school, Roddy might not be prepared for other negative consequences on his life, which, in combination with the situations he is placed into and admittedly some bad decisions, leads to his life seemingly spiraling downward and out of control. Is there a point at which Roddy would renege on the promise if he believes this would get him back on track? - Actors:
- Ivor Novello, Ben Webster, Norman McKinnel, Robin Irvine, Jerrold Robertshaw, Sybil Rhoda, Annette Benson, Lilian Braithwaite, Isabel Jeans, Ian Hunter, Hannah Jones, Barbara Gott, Violet Farebrother, Alf Goddard, Constance Collier, Daisy Jackson, J. Nelson
- Directors:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Producers:
- Michael Balcon, C.M. Woolf
- Writers:
- Constance Collier, Ivor Novello, Eliot Stannard
- Aka:
- When Boys Leave Home
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama, Thrillers
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Reviews (2) of Downhill
A Silent Slide into Melodrama - Downhill review by griggs
A young man’s downfall is rarely treated with such earnest symbolism as in Hitchcock’s Downhill. Roddy, played by Ivor Novello, nobly takes the blame for another’s scandal and tumbles through every melodramatic trap imaginable: disinheritance, exploitation, poverty, and hallucinations in Marseilles. It’s an almost Biblical fall, hammered home by that striking shot of him descending the escalator into the Underground — a metaphor so on the nose you half expect a caption reading “get it?”
There are flashes of Hitchcock’s invention here: dreamlike sequences, tilted angles, and an eye for physical spaces that speak louder than intertitles. But the story itself is stretched thin, the moral lesson laid on thick, and at nearly two hours it begins to sag under its own piety. What could have been a brisk morality play feels more like a cautionary sermon illustrated with clever camerawork. Worth a watch for its stylistic experiments, though as drama it’s stuck firmly on the slow track downhill.
Minor Hitch - Downhill review by Steve
If Alfred Hitchcock took one thing from the success of his previous film, The Lodger, it wasn't that he was the emerging master of suspense… It was the handsome, delicate Ivor Novello who co-wrote this theatrical melodrama.
And he stars as a promising and privileged public schoolboy wrongly accused of theft, who tumbles slowly down to the worst flophouses in Marseilles. Hitch does a decent job. His dissolves, point of view shots, visual humour and character cues are all satisfying.
And there’s an effective dream sequence/hallucination in which the ill-fated youngster is tormented by his misfortunes. Unfortunately, Novello's script invites our sympathy for this wealthy boy reduced to the ignominy of poverty… But there is no compassion at all for those born into it!
This describes a reality where the vulnerable and the poor are ruthlessly exploited, but doesn't draw any conclusions. Its solution is the rich kid alone should be saved. The great director is wasted on this material even though only he is to blame for the clunky symbolism.