Downhill

Downhill (1927) is a silent drama from Alfred Hitchcock, and you can watch it online on iFILM. This is early British Hitchcock — no signature murders yet, but already fixed on guilt and a man punished for something he didn't do. Matinee idol Ivor Novello takes the lead.

Roddy Berwick, school captain and golden boy, takes the blame for a scandal to cover for a friend. The fall is instant: expelled, disowned by his father, locked out of the privileged life he assumed was his. From there it's a long way down. A small inheritance slips quickly into the hands of a scheming pair — a part-actress, part-courtesan and her lover — and Roddy drifts through one humiliation after another, from waiter to bit-part actor to kept man.

Hitchcock stages the descent visually; his famous shot riding the camera down an escalator literally shows the hero sliding downhill. Worth a look for fans of silent cinema, for tracing where the director's style began, and for watching melodrama harden into something colder. Stream Downhill (1927) online on iFILM.