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Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron decide whoes corner they’re in and discuss “The Ring.”
The Picture:
Picture Title: The Ring
Written by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, Ian Hunter, Forrester Harveu, Harry Terry and Gordon Harker
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Year Released: 1927
Watch it Now:
Not the best quality, but the picture is on YouTube
Our Favourite Trivia:
The film was made at Elstree Studios by the newly established British International Pictures, which emerged as one of the two British major studios during the late 1920s and began hiring leading directors from Britain and abroad. It was Hitchcock’s first film for the company .
Hitchcock was frustrated and jumped at the chance to develop an idea of his own. The Ring is commonly described as Hitchcock’s only original screenplay although it actually had input from at least Eliot Stannard, who wrote all of Hitchcock’s other silent films.
Hitchcock had 4 films released in 1927, The Lodger, The Ring, Easy Virtue and Downhill. He had actually already made Downhill but The Ring made it to screens first (by 2 weeks).
Respected and experienced cameraman Jack Cox, an expert at “in camera” effects such as dissolves, overlays and double-exposures, was selected as cinematographer and would go on to work with Hitchcock on all of his BIP films
According to the dialogue card at 1:19:06, the big fight between Jack Saunders and Bob Corby was refereed by Eugene Corri, who entered the ring wearing a tux. Corri made boxing history in December 1907 by being the first referee to referee inside the ring during a fight.
The final boxing match takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, the same place the climax of The Man Who Knew Too Much takes place.
The film’s climax allowed Hitchcock to experiment with the Schüfftan process to seemingly stage the scene within the Royal Albert Hall. Italian-born artist Fortunino Matania, who specialised in creating life-like crowd scenes, worked on the film.
Theatrical movie debut of Gordon Harker (Jack’s Trainer).
The Random Draw for Next Picture:
Next up, we’ll be discussing “The Manxman.”
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