Champagne (1928) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron toast to their success as they discuss “Champagne.”

The Picture:

Picture Title: Champagne (1928)

Written by: Alfred Hitchcock 

Story by: Walter C Mycroft

Scenario by: Eliot Stannard

Starring: Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin, Ferdinand von Alten (as Theo von Alten), Gordon Harker

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Watch the Picture:

There’s a fairly good version of the whole picture on Vimeo-

Our Favourite Trivia:

Hitchcock’s second comedy was this time poorly received, following the critical and commercial success of his first film in the genre, The Farmer’s Wife. 

According to most sources, Champagne originated with an idea by British International Pictures’ scenario editor and literary adviser Walter Mycroft, although Mycroft fails to mention the film in his published memoirs.

The original script was about a young woman in France, working at a champagne bottling factory. She wonders about each bottle and travels to the city where she learns about the over-consumption of alcohol. The script was re-written to be more light hearted when Betty Balfour was cast in the lead.

This is Gordon Harker’s third film in a row with Alfred Hitchcock. He was previously in The Ring and The Farmer’s Wife.

Although his expanding visual technique continued to draw recognition and praise, they were not enough to distract from the film’s lack of an engaging plot. 

Assistant cameraman Alfred Roome, working on one of his first films, later recalled, “They didn’t have a whole script. They wrote it on the back of envelopes on the way to the studio. You never knew what was going to happen.” 

Roome also remembered how the trick shot through the champagne glass was achieved: I was the one who had to focus through the bottom of the glass. Hitch had it made specially by a glass manufacturer who put a lens into the bottom of the giant champagne glass, so we could shoot through it and get a clear picture of what was happening at the other end of the room. We all said it wouldn’t work. Most people said that of Hitch’s ideas, but they almost always did work.

This movie included the first freeze-frame shot.

Although the majority of scenes were filmed at Elstree Studios, the ship-based exteriors were filmed onboard a liner docked at Southampton.

In a press conference for Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock revealed that this movie is his least favorite of all he had made. Hitchcock told Truffaut “The film had no story to tell”.

As part of their “Save the Hitchcock 9” campaign, started in 2010, the British Film Institute undertook a full, if problematic, restoration of Champagne.  Analysis of the only surviving camera negative soon revealed it was a backup negative, comprised of the second best takes of each scene and likely used for export prints. All other surviving prints appeared to be derived from this negative, so the original British theatrical release seemingly no longer exists. Instead, the BFI based their restoration on the backup negative.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “East of Shanghai” which is also known as “Rich and Strange”

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