JAMAICA INN (1939) B/W 90m dir: Alfred Hitchcock

w/Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Leslie Banks, Horace Hodges, Hay Petrie, Emlyn Williams, Marie Ney, Wylie Watson, Frederick Piper

A country squire is secretly the head of a band of pirates who wreck ships and ransack them. Hitchcock's last film made in England before he emigrated to the U.S. (under contract to David O. Selznick) was adapted from the best-selling novel by Daphne du Maurier. Hitchcock's first American film, REBECCA, would also be based on a du Maurier novel.

Hitchcock comments on the film in Francois Truffaut's book, Hitchcock: "Laughton and Erich Pommer were associated on the production of that one. The novel, as you know, is by Daphne du Maurier, and the first script was written by Clarence Dane, who was a playwright of some note. Then Sidney Gilliat came in and we did the script together. Charles Laughton wanted his part built up, and so he brought in J.B. Priestley for additional dialogue. I had first met Erich Pommer back in 1924, when I was writer and art director in Germany on The Blackguard, a picture he had co-produced with Michael Balcon, and I hadn't seen him since that time.

"Jamaica Inn was an absurd thing to undertake. If you examine the basic story, you will see that it's a whodunit. At the end of the eighteenth century, Mary, a young Irish girl, goes to Cornwall to live with her Aunt Patience, whose husband, Joss, is an innkeeper. All sorts of things happen in that tavern, which shelters scavengers and wreckers who not only seem to enjoy total immunity, but who are also kept thoroughly informed of the movements of ships in the area. Why? Because at the head of this gang of thugs is a highly respectable man --- a justice of the peace, no less --- who masterminds all of their operations.

"It was completely absurd, because logically the judge should have entered the scene only at the end of the adventure. He should have carefully avoided the place and made sure he was never seen in the tavern. Therefore it made no sense to cast Charles Laughton in the key role of the justice of the peace. Realizing how incongruous it was, I was truly discouraged, but the contract had been signed. Finally, I made the picture, and although it became a box-office hit, I'm still unhappy over it."