For many years film buffs had to put up with very low-quality home video releases of the early British films directed by Alfred Hitchcock from the 1920s and early 1930s. Thankfully in the 21st Century most of these early titles helmed by Hitchcock have been restored and have been given the special edition treatment on Blu-ray.
In the last few years Kino Lorber, in conjunction with Studio Canal, have released a series of excellent early Hitchcock Region A Blu-rays, with BLACKMAIL, MURDER!, and NUMBER SEVENTEEN. The latest of these is RICH AND STRANGE, a very unique offering made in 1931.
RICH AND STRANGE concerns the adventures of staid English couple Fred Hill (Henry Kendall) and his wife Emily (Joan Barry). Fred is tired of his dull life, and he takes advantage of an inheritance from an uncle to take his wife on an overseas trip. While ship bound the naive Fred falls for a "Princess", while Emily grows close to a sensible middle-aged bachelor. The couple comes near to breaking up, but they stick together through a shipwreck and rescue by a Chinese junk. The ending is ironic, but fitting.
The plot of this film (which was loosely based on an overseas trip taken by Hitchcock and his wife/co-scenarist Alma Reville) is not that of a suspenseful thriller. It's a quirky comedy-drama, featuring two main characters who are not particularly appealing. Later in his life Hitchcock mused that he should have cast actors who were bigger stars, but I have to disagree with him on this point. One of the main reasons Fred and Emily live such drab ordinary lives is that they are ordinary people, and they are way over their heads when they venture out of their comfort zone. If, say, Hitchcock had remade this story while he was working in America, and cast a typical glamorous Hollywood couple, this offbeat tale wouldn't have worked as well.
One does have to take into account that this is a very early sound film, but Hitchcock injects a number of clever visuals flourishes to involve the audience in the story. RICH AND STRANGE isn't one of Hitchcock's better overall films, but it is one of his most unusual and intriguing. Instead of a stylish couple dealing with a murder or a MacGuffin, we get a unhappy husband and wife dealing with the rich and strange subject known as life. This film truly was the unexpected from Hitchcock.
The visual quality on this Blu-ray is magnificent--it's certainly the best I've ever seen this movie look. I had always thought that this movie was a low-budget, modest effort, but this disc reveals that it's very well made. The sound quality here varies--at times dialogue is hard to make out, and the audio mix is very unsteady at times, but I assume that is due to the original elements. The disc case says that the print used on this Blu-ray was a 4K restoration by the British Film Institute.
The main extra here is a new audio commentary from Troy Howarth, and it is up to his usual excellent standards. Howarth analyzes various aspects of the film, placing it in the context of Hitchcock's overall career, and he points out how many elements in the story would crop up again in the director's later work. There's also a introduction by French author Noel Simsolo, and an audio excerpt from the famous Hitchcock-Francois Truffaut interviews, in which the two men specifically discuss RICH AND STRANGE. There are also trailers included for other Hitchcock films that have been released on home video by Kino.
RICH AND STRANGE is a very different type of Alfred Hitchcock film, with a very different type of cast and characters....but that is what I think makes it worth seeing, especially for major fans of the director who are not familiar with it. This Blu-ray is now by far the best version of the title available on home video.
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