Young and Innocent [PG]

When an actress’s body is found strangled on the beach, the police take into custody her young lover, as the evidence against him seems all too coincidental to be fluke. Before his trial he escapes and with the daughter of the police chief in tow embarks upon a mission to track down the real killer before the police catch up with them. 

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. Fuelled by the pursuit of the wrong man; a recurring theme in many of Hitchcock’s classic, Young and Innocent nonetheless sets itself apart from its peer group by being juiced up to the point of frenzy with various elements of crescendo-ing romance and dark comedy akin to that favoured in modern cinema by the Coen brothers or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. It may be black and white and crackling with antiquity, but the story and cleverness of this movie defies the laws of aging and still tugs at a multitude of the audience’s emotional strings making it another real classic in the Hitchcock repertoire: I could watch it again and again. 

When an actress’s body is found strangled on the beach, the police take into custody her young lover, as the evidence against him seems all too coincidental to be fluke. Before his trial he escapes and with the daughter of the police chief in tow embarks upon a mission to track down the real killer before the police catch up with them. 

Everything about this movie worked harmoniously and without fault really. It begins very explosively: a fiery argument right from the off that leaves you slightly bemused when we fade to black and the waves start rolling in. The wrong-man theme falls quickly into place and proceeds to grow larger and larger with the various bouts of comedy that are thrown into the mix along the way. A blink of the eye and you’d miss these wonderful little titbits that occur so innocently and nonchalantly but of course just further incriminate the poor hero. We then have this great romance that flourishes between the wrongly accused and the chief’s  headstrong daughter. This is particularly lovely because the two are rather contrasting characters and it’s really fascinating to watch and anticipate which way their relationship will go. 

Of course, the epic, swelling music helps greatly to secure the feeling of ‘love is in the air’; in this film I couldn’t help noticing the role that music played in not only creating the atmosphere but also adding to the comedy. During possibly the most intense and suspenseful scene of the film the accompanying music is jazz, very light-hearted and fun, with the particular song slipping cues to the audience as to who and where the real killer can be found. I don’t know about anyone else, but I personally really admire directors who use music to their advantage in this way: the director most admired for doing this is Quentin Tarantino who’s soundtracks are as equally strong performers as John Travolta or Michael Madsen. 

Starring Nova Pilbeam, Derrick De Marney, Percy Marmont, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, John Longden, Basil Radford, Pamela Carme, and George Curzon, Young and Innocent is a fantastic and rollicking romantic thriller filled with action, suspense, drama, comedy, and romance. Fuelled by a theme that recurred in many of Hitchcock’s critically acclaimed works, this little classic sets itself apart by employing clever little spatterings of comedy as well as adding an extra layer of intrigue through character development and conflicts of emotions and obligations. I really loved it.