Jamaica Inn: Piracy on Dry Land

Jamaica Inn (1939)

One of Alfred Hitchcock's British-era films and probably one of his least representative works, Jamaica Inn is from a Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca) story, adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock, a journeyman director who churned out a lot of product during the 20s and 30s for British International Films, among others. Soon after this he was lured to Hollywood to work for David O. Selznick and in America he reached his zenith of fame and notoriety.

Jamaica Inn has got a pretty good story and cast and concerns a gang of what seems to be little more than pirates, except they operate out of the Jamaica Inn, near the coast of Cornwall, around 1800, before the British Coast Guard Service was established. These fiends would obscure the coastal light and cause shipwrecks on the rocky shores. Even worse, they would line the shore like vultures and slay the survivors as they reached land, going by the maxim, "Dead men tell no tales." Then they would pick the wreck clean of valuables.

The law in those parts is the squire, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton) who, far from hindering the piracy, actively abets it and shares in the ill-gotten gains.

As the film begins we see one of the horrific acts of piracy and the looks on the faces of the pirates are brutish beyond belief as they alternatively bash the victims' brains out with cudgels or stab them with large knives, at their whim. The final frame of the scene shows one of the pirates wiping the blade of his knife on his shirt, so brazen are they that they have no fear of the law.

The film is shot very well in the German Expressionist manner and looks a lot like the MGM classic dramas of the era like "David Copperfield," or even David Lean's "Great Expectations," a British film of 1946 which could almost be a descendant of this very atmospheric style.

The story builds rather conventionally to a good, if predictable climax, but the players give it good solid performances and it's worth seeing for that and the moody cinematography (Bernard Knowles).

Apart from Charles Laughton, who is a scenery chewer from the git go, we have the first screen appearance (according to the credits) of Maureen O'Hara, a fiery Irish beauty, whose "Esmeralda" in Laughton's 1939 "Hunchback of Notre Dame," won everyone's heart and still does today. In Jamaica Inn her character wins all hearts also with her luminous beauty and Irish spunk.

For a hero we have the unlikely candidate of Robert Newton, who made his mark most indelibly with his Long John Silver, both of motion picture and television fame. Newton became identified with the role and never had to work seriously again. Here, he was young and could pass for handsome, not having developed the leering pop-eye he would later be known for. Newton is a secret agent, another Hitchcock trademark, on His Majesty's secret service, trying to expose the secret of the disappearing ships and stay alive to tell the tale.

All told, Jamaica Inn is a pleasant film that bears watching and can be re-watched at intervals as it has good staying power.

The DVD is from Delta, a public domain publisher, and the film is quite well preserved with good black and white video and acceptable audio. The movie runs 98 minutes and is also offered as a part of several Hitchcock collections, mainly by public domain companies.

Hitchcock's many fans will enjoy this movie that doesn't follow his usual line of work yet still shows the stylistic touches that the master was incorporating into all his works.