Young and Innocent

Young and Innocent

Promotional poster
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by Edward Black
Written by
Screenplay by
Based on A Shilling for Candles
by Josephine Tey
Starring
Music by
  • Jack Beaver (uncredited)
  • Louis Levy (uncredited)
Cinematography Bernard Knowles
Edited by Charles Frend
Production
company
Distributed by GFD
Release dates
  • November 1937 (1937-11) (London)
  • 17 February 1938 (1938-02-17) (USA)
Running time
 83 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

Young and Innocent (American title: The Girl Was Young) is a 1937 British crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney.[1] Based on the 1936 novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey, the film is about a young man on the run from a murder charge who enlists the help of a woman who must put herself at risk for his cause. It is notable for an elaborately staged crane shot Hitchcock devised towards the end of the film, which identifies the real murderer.

Plot

Christine Clay (Pamela Carme), a successful actress, argues passionately with her jealous ex-husband Guy (George Curzon), who makes particular reference to a much younger man staying near her at her retreat on the English coast, with who he suspects her of cavorting. Christine slaps him several times across the face, but he hardly reacts, choosing instead to depart without a word.

The next morning, Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney), apparently the young man in question, happens to be walking along the seaside cliffs when Christine's strangled dead body washes ashore. Tisdall recognizes her, she who he hadn't seen in three years when they completed a business deal in Hollywood (he sold her a story). He runs to get help and call the police, but two young adult female swimmers arrive just in time to see him racing away from the corpse. A belt from a raincoat, one such he had and which was recently been stolen from his car, is found next to the body, further implicating him in her strangling. He is subsequently arrested and becomes the main suspect, partly because of a large sum of money Christine left to him in her will, a gift of which he was unaware.

Tisdall is grilled all night by Scotland Yard detectives until he faints. He is brought round by the aid of Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam), daughter of the local police Chief Constable. Tisdall from there is taken directly into court for his formal arraignment. Saddled with a completely incompetent barrister, Tisdall doubts if his innocence will ever be established. He elects to take advantage of a crowded courthouse and make his escape, wearing the barrister's eyeglasses as a disguise.

After his escape, Tisdall finds Erica on the road pushing her Morris car, which has run out of gas, and convinces her to give him a ride after he pays for her gas. Though she is initially fearful and unsure about her passenger, Erica eventually becomes convinced of his innocence and elects to help him in any way that she can. They are eventually spotted together, forcing both to stay on the run from the police. Tisdall tries to prove his innocence by tracking down the stolen coat to show that it still has its belt, with the one found next to Christine's body thus not his.

The duo succeed in tracking down Old Will (Edward Rigby), a sociable china-mender and homeless bum that was known to have been given Tisdall's coat from whoever stole it. The coat is missing its belt, which Will never got with the coat itself. Will agrees to help them find the man who gave him the coat; unfortunately, all that Old Will can remember about the man is his distinctive eye twitch.

Upon searching the pockets of the coat, Erica finds a clue, a box of matches from the Grand Hotel, a place Tisdall realizes he has never been. They hope that the thief/murderer has some connection to the hotel itself. Erica is separated from the group, however, and taken in by the police. Upon realizing that his daughter has fully allied herself with the murder suspect, her father chooses to resign his position as Chief Constable rather than arrest her for assisting Tisdall. Nonetheless, Erica and Old Will go to the Grand Hotel together, hoping to find the true murderer. In a memorably long, continuous sequence, the camera pans right from Erica and Old Will's entrance to the hotel and then moves forward from the very back of the hotel ballroom, finally focusing in extreme close up on the drummer in a dance band performing in blackface, that twitching-eyed man being Guy. Recognizing Old Will in the audience, and seeing policemen nearby (unaware that they have followed Old Will in the hopes of finding Tisdall), Guy performs poorly due to fear and a drug he has been taking to try to control the twitching, and is berated by the musical conductor. Eventually, Guy faints in the middle of a performance, drawing the attention of Erica and the policemen. Immediately after being revived and confronted, he confesses his crime and begins laughing hysterically. Erica, who has mutually fallen in love with Tisdall, then tells her father that she thinks it's time they invited Tisdall to their home for dinner.

Changes from the novel

American theatrical release poster with alternate title

Significant changes were made in adapting the book for the film. The screenwriters took the main suspect of the novel, Robert Tisdall, and his unexpected, initially reluctant supporter, Erica Burgoyne, and left out all the other characters, including Tey's Inspector Alan Grant and even the original murderer (who is not the same character as in the film). Thus, Tisdall's flight from justice was elaborated and blown up into a full-length film that omitted the whodunit subplots and distractions of Tey's novel.

Hitchcock's cameo

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. He can be seen outside the courthouse, holding a camera, at 14 minutes into the film.

On the Mike Oldfield album Five Miles Out, on the track "Orabidoo", at 9'12" there can be heard a sample of the conductor criticising the drummer: "Don't come in again like that. It isn't funny and I pay someone else to make the orchestrations!"

Main cast

Digital restoration

A frame-by-frame digital restoration was done by Prasad Corporation, removing dirt, tears, scratches and other defects.[2]

References

Citations
  1. ↑ "Young and Innocent (1937)". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
  2. ↑ prasadgroup.org, Digital Film Restoration
Bibliography
  • Spoto, Donald (1992). The Art of Alfred Hitchcock (Second ed.). New York: Anchor Books. pp. 63–69. ISBN 978-0385418133. 
  • Spoto, Donald (1999). The Dark Side of Genius (Centennial ed.). New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306809323. 
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