This screening will feature live musical accompaniment by pianist Morgan Cooke. 

Stannard resumes his regular screen credit for scenario, adapting the long-running stage comedy by Eden Phillpotts;  as with Easy Virtue, he skilfully streamlines the plot, inserting an initial backstory that makes it less stagey by reducing the need for expository dialogue.

Lillian Hall-Davis, star of The Ring and one of the great silent actresses, here has a contrasting role, as modest housekeeper to the widowed farmer now determined to find a second wife. Sadly, neither she nor Stannard would long survive the industry’s conversion to sound, in contrast to Hitchcock’s triumphant progress. As so often, he exploits his material and his high-quality collaborators to the full, in a film rich in expressive camera movement, sophisticated point-of-view editing, and warm human comedy – altogether one of the sunniest and most purely enjoyable films of his career.

A restoration by the BFI National Archive in association with STUDIOCANAL. 

This event is part of The Genius of Alfred Hitchcock: Part Four, the final part of our complete retrospective of Hitchcock’s 52 surviving films (March 2nd – 31st).