Hitchcock Review: Rich and Strange (1931)
Years before he made box office smashes with A-list talent and became a household name as "the master of suspense," Alfred Hitchcock was a young English director cutting his creative teeth and finding his way in silent film and early talkies. 1931's Rich and Strange , alternately known in the U.S. as East of Shanghai, starts as a quirky romantic comedy: Fred (Henry Kendall) and Emily (Joan Berry) are a young married couple who are struggling to make ends meet. Fred is restless and self-pitying, while Emily is practical, optimistic, and madly in love with her husband. When they inherit a large amount of money from a wealthy relative, Fred quits his job and they set sail to see the world on an ocean liner, where their relationship is tested when they both fall for other people. Not content for this to simply be a relationship story, it also becomes a travelogue and a Titanic- level disaster movie. It's as if Hitchcock had to fill the movie with everything people wa...