''The Pleasure Garden'' is a 1925 British-German silent

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

in his feature film directorial debut. Based on the 1923 novel by

Oliver Sandys Marguerite Florence Laura Jarvis, also known under the pseudonym of Oliver Sandys (7 October 1886 – 10 March 1964) was a British writer, screenwriter, and actress. She used several other names and aliases, such as Countess Barcynska, Hélène B ...

, the film is about two chorus girls at the Pleasure Garden Theatre in London and their troubled relationships.

Plot

Jill, a young dancer, arrives in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

with a letter of introduction to Mr. Hamilton, proprietor of the Pleasure Garden Theatre. The letter and all her money are stolen from her handbag as she waits to see him. Patsy, a chorus girl at the Pleasure Garden, sees her difficulty and offers to take her to her own lodgings and to try to get her a job. Next morning Jill is successful in getting a part in the show. Her fiancé, Hugh, arrives with a colleague called Levet. Hugh and Patsy become very close while Jill is being pursued by a number of rich men, eventually breaking up with Hugh in order to begin a relationship with the wealthy Prince Ivan. Not long after this, Hugh is sent to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

by his company. Jill moves out of the lodgings she shares with Patsy and becomes more involved with the Prince. As she becomes more successful and used to the rich and famous lifestyle she also becomes more dismissive of Patsy, shunning her and eventually seeing her as a commoner. As Patsy laments the loss of her friend, she is comforted by Levet who convinces her to enter into marriage with him. The couple honeymoon in Italy before he leaves to join Hugh in Africa. After some time Patsy finally receives a letter from her husband in which he says he has been sick for weeks. Patsy is determined to go to take care of him and asks Jill to lend her the fare. Jill refuses as she is preparing for her marriage to the Prince and has no money to spare. Patsy is able to borrow the fare from her landlords Mr and Mrs Sidey. When she arrives at her husband's bungalow, she finds that he is having an affair with a local woman and leaves. Levet tries to drive the woman away but when she refuses to leave him, follows her into the sea and drowns her. Meanwhile, Patsy has found that Hugh really is very ill with a fever and stays to take care of him. Hugh has since discovered from a newspaper that Jill is to marry the Prince and he and Patsy soon realize that they love each other. Levet finds them together and accuses Hugh of making advances to his wife. Patsy agrees to follow Levet back to his bungalow in order to save Hugh. During the night, Levet is stricken with guilt and paranoia over the murder of his mistress and begins seeing ghostly visions of her. Levet becomes convinced that the ghost of his mistress will not stop haunting him until he murders Patsy too. Levet corners Patsy with a sword but he is shot dead before he can kill her. Hugh and Patsy find consolation with each other and return to London.

Cast

Virginia Valli Virginia Valli (died September 24, 1968) was an American stage and film actress whose motion picture career started in the silent film era and lasted until the beginning of the sound film era of the 1930s. Early life Born Virginia McSweeney in ...

as Patsy Brand * Carmelita Geraghty as Jill Cheyne *

Miles Mander Miles Mander (born Lionel Henry Mander; 14 May 1888 – 8 February 1946), was an English character actor of the early Hollywood cinema, also a film director and producer, and a playwright and novelist. He was sometimes credited as Luther Mile ...

as Levet * John Stuart as Hugh Fielding *

Ferdinand Martini Ferdinand Martini (1 September 1870 – 23 December 1930) was a German film actor. He appeared in 38 films between 1920 and 1931. He was born in Munich and died in Germany. Selected filmography * '' The Monastery's Hunter'' (1920) * '' Nig ...

as Mr. Sidey * Florence Helminger as Mrs. Sidey *

Georg H. Schnell Georg Heinrich Schnell (11 April 1878 – 31 March 1951) was a German actor who remains perhaps best-known for his role as shipowner Harding in ''Nosferatu, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens'' (1922). Georg appeared in over one hundred fi ...

as Oscar Hamilton *

Karl Falkenberg Karl Falkenberg (born Karl Franz Josef Falkenberg, 6 April 1887 – died after 1936) was a German-Jewish film actor. Selected filmography * '' Clown Charly'' (1918) * '' Cain'' (1918) * '' Blackmailed'' (1920) * ''The Song of the Puszta'' (1 ...

as Prince Ivan * Elizabeth Pappritz as Native Girl (uncredited) *

Louis Brody Louis Brody (born Ludwig M'bebe Mpessa; 15 February 1896 – 11 February 1951) was a Cameroonian-born German film actor, musician and showfighter. Brody was born in Douala, in the German colony of Kamerun, now Cameroon. His career began in the 1 ...

as Plantation Manager (uncredited)

Production

Hitchcock described the casting process thus: Producer

Michael Balcon Sir Michael Elias Balcon (19 May 1896 – 17 October 1977) was an English film producer known for his leadership of Ealing Studios in West London from 1938 to 1955. Under his direction, the studio became one of the most important British film ...

allowed Hitchcock to direct the film when

Graham Cutts John Henry Graham Cutts (1884 – 7 February 1958), known as Graham Cutts, was a British film director, one of the leading British directors in the 1920s. His fellow director A. V. Bramble believed that Gainsborough Pictures had been built o ...

, a jealous executive at

Gainsborough Pictures Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, north London. Gainsborough Studios was active between 1924 and 1951. The com ...

, refused to let Hitchcock work on '' The Rat''. The film was shot in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

( Alassio,

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

and

Lake Como Lake Como ( it, Lago di Como , ; lmo, label=Western Lombard, Lagh de Còmm , ''Cómm'' or ''Cùmm'' ), also known as Lario (; after the la, Larius Lacus), is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the thir ...

) and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Many misfortunes befell the cast and crew. When Gaetano Ventimiglia, the film's

cinematographer The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...

, failed to declare the film stock to Italian customs officials, the team had to pay fines and buy new film, seriously depleting their budget. For the only time in a British Hitchcock production, both lead actresses, Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty, were American. The film was shot in 1925 and shown briefly in London in April 1926. But it was not officially released in the UK until January 1927, just before Hitchcock's third film, '' The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog'', became a hit in February 1927.

Production credits

The production credits on the film were as follows: * Director -

* Producer -

* Writing -

Eliot Stannard Eliot Stannard (1 March 1888 – 21 November 1944) was an English screenwriter and director. He was the son of civil engineer Arthur Stannard and Yorkshire-born novelist Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Palmer. Stannard wrote the screenplay for more ...

(screenplay),

(underlying novel) * Assistant director -

Alma Reville Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982), was an English director, editor, and screenwriter. She was the wife of the film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including ''Shad ...

Preservation and home video status

In June 2012, ''The Pleasure Garden'' and eight other silent Hitchcock films were restored by the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

. As a result, 20 minutes of missing footage was added to this film, including "the atmospheric color tinting of the period". A new score was commissioned for the restoration by young British composer Daniel Patrick Cohen and it has been performed live with the film many times around the world. It has not been released on home video due to a lack of funds to properly record the score. The only official DVD release contains a poor quality edited version of the film by US collector

Raymond Rohauer Raymond Rohauer (1924, Buffalo, New York – November 10, 1987) was an American film collector and distributor. Early life and career Rohauer moved to California in 1942 and was educated at Los Angeles City College. Rohauer made a five-reel ...

. Like Hitchcock's other British films, all of which are copyrighted worldwide, ''The Pleasure Garden'' has been heavily bootlegged on home video. At the end of 2021, ''The Pleasure Garden'' became the first Hitchcock film to enter the

public domain in the United States Works are in the public domain if they are not covered by intellectual property rights (such as copyright) at all, or if the intellectual property rights to the works have expired. All works first published or released in the United States b ...

but only in its non-restored, scoreless form. It will remain copyrighted in the rest of the world until the end of 2050.

Significance

According to critic

Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the ''Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a c ...

, ''The Pleasure Gardens opening scene stands like a virtual "clip reel of Hitchcock motifs to come". The first shot captures chorus girls descending a spiral staircase (see ''Vertigo''); a man uses opera glasses to better appreciate a blonde chorus dancer (see ''

Rear Window ''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...

''); and the same blonde, who at first appears erotically remote, later emerges as down-to-earth and approachable (see '' Family Plot'').

References

External links

* *
''The Pleasure Garden''
at the

Screenonline Screenonline is a website about the history of British film, television and social history as documented by film and television. The project has been developed by the British Film Institute and funded by a £1.2 million grant from the National Lot ...

''Alfred Hitchcock Collectors’ Guide: The Pleasure Garden'' at Brenton Film
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pleasure Garden, The 1925 films Films based on British novels Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock British black-and-white films British crime drama films British silent feature films Films produced by Erich Pommer 1925 crime drama films 1925 directorial debut films Films set in London Films shot at Bavaria Studios 1920s British films Silent drama films 1920s English-language films