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Downhill (1927 film)

Downhill
Downhill1.jpg
Original Movie Poster
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by Michael Balcon
C. M. Woolf
Written by Play:
Constance Collier
Ivor Novello
Adaption:
Eliot Stannard
Starring Ivor Novello
Robin Irvine
Isabel Jeans
Ian Hunter
Violet Farebrother
Cinematography Claude L. McDonnell
Edited by Ivor Montagu
Lionel Rich
Production
company
Distributed by Woolf & Freedman Film Service (UK)
Sono Art-World Wide Pictures (US)
Release date
  • 24 October 1927 (1927-10-24)
Running time
80 minutes (UK)
74 minutes (United States)
Country United Kingdom
Language Silent film
English intertitles

Downhill is a 1927 British silent drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ivor Novello, Robin Irvine, and Isabel Jeans, and based on the play Down Hill by Novello and Constance Collier. The film was made by Gainsborough Pictures at their Islington studios. The film is Hitchcock's fifth film as director. The American alternative title for this film was When Boys Leave Home.

At an expensive English boarding school for boys, Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello) is School Captain and star rugby player. He and his best friend Tim Wakely (Robin Irvine) start seeing a waitress Mabel (Annette Benson). Out of pique, she tells the headmaster that she is pregnant and that Roddy is the father. In fact it was Tim, who cannot afford to be expelled because he needs to win a scholarship to attend Oxford University. Promising Tim that he will never reveal the truth, Roddy accepts expulsion.

Returning to his parents’ home, he finds that his father Sir Thomas Berwick (Norman McKinnel) believes him guilty of the false accusation.

Leaving home, Roddy finds work as an actor in a theatre. He marries the leading actress Julia Fotheringale (Isabel Jeans) after inheriting £30,000 from a relation. The unfaithful Julia secretly continues an affair with her leading man Archie (Ian Hunter) and discards Roddy after his inheritance is exhausted. He becomes a gigolo in a Paris music hall but soon quits over self-loathing at romancing older women for money.

Roddy ends up alone and delirious in a shabby room in Marseilles. Some sailors take pity on him and ship him back home, possibly hoping for reward. Roddy's father has learned the truth about the waitress's false accusation during his son's absence and joyfully welcomes him back. Roddy resumes his previous life.

The film is based on the play, Down Hill, written by its star Ivor Novello and Constance Collier under the combined alias David L'Estrange.


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