Rich and Strange

Rich and Strange (1931) is an early Alfred Hitchcock film you can watch online on iFILM. Fred, a bored London clerk, longs for a bigger life, and one day his uncle wires him a large inheritance with a single instruction: go and spend it now.

Fred and his wife Emily set off on a world cruise, but money and freedom don't mend the marriage — they pry it open. Aboard ship he falls for a phony "princess," while Emily warms to a courtly army colonel. The further the liner carries them through Paris, Suez and Singapore, the further the couple drift apart, until a shipwreck forces them to remember who the whole trip was supposed to be for.

Made five years before The Lady Vanishes, this catches Hitchcock still experimenting — silent passages, early sound, near-documentary glimpses of real ports. It's a sour little comedy about getting the dream you wanted and finding it isn't what you imagined. A real curiosity for anyone tracing where the master of suspense began. Stream Rich and Strange (1931) online on iFILM.