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The Hillcrists (C.V.France, Helen Haye), an aristocratic family, is
desperately trying to defend their village against industrialist
Hornblower (Edmund Gwenn), who tries to buy up most of the place to turn
it into production plants and the like, and they are so desperate to keep
him out that they relie on the services of shady Dawker (Edward Chapman),
who knows just about every dirty trick in the book. Still, Hornblower
knows a few tricks of his own as well, and he manages to outbid the
Hillcrists on an important piece of land. Eventually, Mrs Hillcrist
learns that Hornblowers daughter-in-law Chloe (Phyllis Konstam) has a past
as a prostitute, and she and Dawker blackmail Hornblower into selling said
land to the Hillcrists way below its worth - just so Chloe's husband
Charles (John Longden) doesn't find out about his wife's past. Charles
however is so desperate to find out what's going on behind his back that
he beats the truth out of Dawker - upon which he wants to expel his wife
despite the fact that she's pregnant, and when Chloe learns about that,
she kills herself ... and only when faced with Chloe's dead body do the
Hillcrists and the Hornblowers come to their senses. Jill Esmond and
FRank Lawton play a Romeo
and Juliet-style couple, but little is made of that subplot. One
of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser directorial efforts, basically a soap opera
shot in a completely stagey manner. Actually, one can't help but feeling
that Hitchcock had only the least interest in this film of his, there's no
trademark black humour, no setpieces of any kind, not even the spark of an
original idea ... to be quite honest, this film is a bit of a
disappointment.
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