The Hitchcock connection

Saw this film at the National Film Theatre introduced by curator Jo Botting of the BFI last night.

According to her researches there is probably very little Hitchcock content in it at all - he was only present for a maximum of "six or seven hours on set" after all the main sequences had been filmed by the main credited director, Adrian Brunel. Her chief argument was that most of the comic sequences attributed at various times to Hitchcock were in fact among those scripted by Brunel himself, so not only was it rather unlikely that Hitchcock would have been engaged to re-shoot those, but any Hitchcock 'style' supposedly detected in them by critics can rather be laid at Brunel's door (he being also known for dark humour), and that the regular 'Hitchcock collaborators' involved can equally well be identified as leading contract players for BIP at the time (which they were).

The not implausible suggestion she put forward was that the only reason for employing Hitchcock at all, however, briefly, was because British International Pictures wanted to be able to appropriate his name for the credits and thus boost the fortunes of a rather expensive picture: the reason why Hitchock consistently disassociated himself with the film afterwards was because this didn't in fact have the desired effect on the film's sales!

Gather round, lads and lasses, gather round...