DOWNHILL
WHEN BOYS LEAVE HOME
1927,
British Film Institute,
105 min,
UK,
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Popular composer and performer Ivor Novello cowrote the play upon which this drama was based, and he stars as Roddy Berwick, a top rugby player at a tony English boarding school. Roddy takes the blame for his best friend when a local girl both had dated gets pregnant, and his life goes downhill from there. Told with minimal intertitles, this silent benefits enormously from Hitchock’s visual panache.