Downhill (1927) on Netflix
Roddy Berwick is the school captain and a rugby star. A shopgirl named Mabel accuses him of fathering her child, and to shield his friend Tim Wakeley he accepts expulsion.
- Watch on NetflixThis title is not on Netflix right now. Please check back later for updates.
- Watch on Prime
- Watch on NordVPN
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.0/103,594 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
An English boarding school for boys has Roddy Berwick as its captain and rugby star, and Tim Wakeley as his closest friend. A shopgirl, Mabel, invites the pair to her shop after hours to dance. She later tells the school's headmaster that she is expecting a child and that Roddy is responsible. Tim is the real father, and losing his place would end his chance at an Oxford scholarship, so Roddy gives his word to stay silent and lets himself be expelled. At home his father, Sir Thomas Berwick, treats the charge as true, and Roddy walks out. He finds work as a waiter in a dinner theater.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Downhill (1927)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ivor Novello thrilled his female fans in the stage play by washing his bare legs after a rugby match, and Hitchcock included a similar scene in the film, in which Novello is shown naked from the waist up.
- Hitchcock used a descending escalator at Maida Vale tube station as a visual metaphor for Roddy's downhill slide, and later told Francois Truffaut it was "a naive touch that I wouldn't do today," echoing it with an elevator descent.
- Preferring visual narrative to title cards, Hitchcock had a closeup of Ivor Novello's Roddy in a tuxedo pull back to reveal him pocketing a woman's cigarette case as he waited on a table, then followed him to show he was playing a waiter on stage.
- Hitchcock experimented with dream sequences by sometimes shooting them in superimpositions, but broke with the usual blurred images for hallucination by putting "the dream in the reality, in solid, unblurred images."
