Bill Slocum The tendency to see greatness in the earliest extant work of a true master is understandable yet not entirely merited in this, the first feature-length film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.We arrive upon a stage production of "Passion Flowers," a dance-hall revue where pretty girls kicking up a storm seems the main attraction. One of our "Flowers," Patsy Brand (Virginia Valli) keeps the lusty patrons at a wry distance. She opens her arms only to a new girl, Jill Cheyne (Carmelita Geraghty), who seems an innocent but quickly shows she's a woman with an agenda, and little time for friends after they serve their purpose. This includes a "dewy-eyed" fellow named Hugh Fielding (John Stuart) who is engaged to Jill but finds a truer friend in Patsy.A dinky period melodrama with overplayed sentiment and silent-cinema quirks galore, "The Pleasure Garden" benefits from a smooth opening sequence that shows our young director in splendid form. We begin with a shot of dancing girls rushing down a spiral staircase to perform, followed by a shot of a row of male spectators, each individually expressing voyeuristic delight, capped off by the one woman in the row, who has nodded off.I felt a bit like her well before the business of "The Pleasure Garden" had concluded. Not that "Pleasure Garden" is ever bad. It offers decent central performances and some delightful bits of business courtesy of Patsy's middle-class landlord couple and a cute dog, named "Cuddles" in the film. But the story lacks the depth and engagement of Hitchcock's better films to come.Hitchcock does a nice job early on playing with audience expectations. Patsy's opening moments show her in a blond wig, and when one patron clumsily compliments her on her "lovely curl of hair," she takes it off her wig with a smirk. "Then I give it to you and hope you have a nice time," she says, cutting him off.But it's Jill who turns out to be the film's heel, something anticipated in the way she pushes Cuddles off Patsy's bed in a moment no one else sees but us. Hitch loved these sort of designing women, and made much of them in other movies, but here he just trots Jill through her paces until she upstages Patsy 11 minutes in and then proceeds to shake her off once she gets herself established with the same sleazy patrons Patsy wisely avoids.The story is much the same with the other duplicitous character in the film, a friend of Hugh's named Levet (Miles Mander, the only actor here who worked in another Hitchcock film, "Murder!"). Levet is entirely too sly and one-note to make us understand why practical Patsy jets off with him after he tells her sob stories of a lonely life on a tropical post. No surprise we find him a few minutes after marrying Patsy in the arms of a tropical-island girl he treats like a maid.The story does nothing with Jill after establishing her true nature; we watch her coldly cut off Patsy a couple of times and wonder what made Patsy into such a victim when she had smarts and looks to spare. Valli, like Geraghty an American actress in this very British film, plays her part with too much fluttering vibrato, even if it is what the story requires. The resolution of Patsy's unhappy marriage is done in a particularly utilitarian style, Hitch showing his screen economy but not the shadings or textures of his later work.I liked "The Pleasure Garden" more for the hints of later greatness, though the symbolism here is too often on-the-nail for its own good. When Levet is done with Patsy, he casually throws a rose he gave her into the river and tells her "Had to - it wilted." Meanwhile, her relationship with Hugh just sort of happens out of left field, with us being told by the end Cuddles knew all along.It's a pat end for a pat film, not terrible, just stunted by the time it was made, the silent medium it was made in, and the inexperience of its maker, who managed to get much better very soon.

TheLittleSongbird The Pleasure Garden is notable for being the first complete film of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest and most influential directors in film, so it is one of great historical interest. It's not one of his best, there is somewhat of a primitive look, some of the pacing does get pedestrian in the middle and the scripting at times suffers from being overly talky. Hitchcock has definitely done worse though, and The Pleasure Garden is a decent film. Even for such an early effort, Hitchcock's direction does shine through with great use of camera angles and directorial flourishes. No signs of phoning in. The story is intelligently explored, the script serves the actors and Hitchcock competently(though of course there have been much better scripts since) and while the pacing is uneven the beginning and ending are solid enough. The acting give their all, maybe with some over-playing here and there, but there is signs of effort. All in all, a quite decent first complete film, though Hitchcock definitely went on to much better since. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Interesting composure and camera-work, and the dog, are about all this one has going for it. Interesting, slightly voyeuristic opening shot of dancers pouring down a spiral staircase, in sepia-tinted brown. A bit of mild, subtle humour as we see a bored man among the first row of otherwise thrilled patrons at the revue. Top hat'd Hamilton smoking a cigar while standing in front of a 'Smoking Prohibited' sign. People coming home to find their dog has chewed up their clothes These bits show the director already having a sense of humour, and playing with his audience, but not yet really knowing what to do with the fairly uninvolving story present, a sort of behind-the-scenes melodrama at a revue; infidelity, and the murder at the beach house. Surprisingly dull and lackluster results, considering the way it all sounds, although the climax does have a little bit of action to it. A lot of the sets are well done, as is the director's humorous flair in filming some of them, but quite frankly, the plot is just boring and uneven. Were it not for the fact that this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's first films as director (it is his first solely-directed feature film, but third film to be released) , no one would remember, or care about, this one.

Andrew Nixon The Pleasure Garden is the first film that Alfred Hitchcock directed to completion. It's a nice look into the earliest directorial thoughts and techniques of the master. Even in this earliest film, we can see signs of what would become some of his signature trademarks. I enjoyed some of the point of view shots early in the film with the blurred view of the man looking through his monocle as well as the gentleman looking through the binoculars at the show girls legs. There is also a spiral staircase in the opening of this movie. Not that it was used like the staircase in Vertigo, but it made me smile thinking of how important that would be in his later film. The story deals with the idea of infidelity. Jill (Carmelita Geraghty) is an aspiring dancer who gets engaged to Hugh (John Stuart) who has to leave for work overseas. Patsy (Virginia Valli), who has helped Jill get her start, starts to worry about Jill keeping her promise to wait for Hugh. Jill's career is taking off and she begins to fool around with other guys. Patsy marries Levett (Miles Mander), Hugh's friend who also goes overseas to work with Hugh. Unlike Jill, Patsy remains true to her husband, thinking only of being with him. She receives a letter that her husband has taken ill and scrapes up the money to go be with her husband in his time of need. When she arrives, she finds that he has taken to drinking and island women. That's when the trouble ensues. I enjoyed Hitch's first film. It's a little slow starting, but picks up pace as it goes along. I liked seeing Cuddles, the dog, thrown in for a little comic relief to contrast the seriousness of the film, which of course is another of Hitchcock's trademarks. There was also a nice, subtle score by Lee Erwin, that fit the film well.*** (Out of 4)