The Manxman features Carl Brisson, who had previously worked for Hitchcock in The Ring (1927), the odd Malcolm Keen, already a veteran of the two Hitchcock films The Mountain Eagle (1926) and The Lodger (1926), and Anny Ondra, in her first and penultimate Hitchcock film. Ondra can be identified as the first of Hitchcock’s blonde obsessions.

A sailor (Brisson) and his girlfriend (Ondra) live on the Isle of Man, visited regularly by their lawyer friend (Keen), who is legally sympathetic to the needs of the island’s fisherfolk. Brisson wants to marry Ondra but is intimidated by her father who vindictively points out that he has no money and has no future. Brisson announces to Ondra that he is travelling the world to make his fortune, and asks her to wait for him. He also plies Keen (who is secretly also in love with Ondra) to look after her while he is gone. While Brisson is off to sea, Ondra falls in love with Keen. Then news comes of Brisson’s death in Africa. But, in true Enoch Arden fashion, Brisson shows up alive and monied to confuse and frustrate the honor-bound couple. Ondra marries Brisson to keep her commitment to him; they have a child; she decides she loves Keen too much to continue the charade. Only now, Keen is in-line for an appointment as a judge. He cannot be scandalized by his previous relationship with Ondra. She attempts suicide. Her case is the first heard by the newly-appointed Keen. Okay, so the story is not terribly exciting by today’s standards and can be as tough-going as Hitchcock’s society drama Easy Virtue (1927), but it is occasionally adventurous in its storytelling technique. — Carl Bennett

2007 Lions Gate Entertainment edition

The Manxman (1929), black & white, 84 minutes, not rated, with The Ring (1927), black & white, 90 minutes, not rated, Murder! (1930), black & white, 103 minutes, not rated, The Skin Game (1931), black & white, 83 minutes, not rated, Rich and Strange (1931), black & white, 84 minutes, not rated.

Lions Gate Entertainment, 20860, UPC 0-12236-20860-0.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, two single-sided, dual-layered DVD discs and one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 1, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 25 chapter stops, keep case, $39.98.
DVD release date: 6 February 2007.
Country of origin: USA

After years of cheap home video editions mastered from lousy 16mm prints, we now have a quality home video edition mastered from a very-good to excellent 35mm print. While the print has the usual number of flaws inherent in one from the silent era, speckling, dust and processing flaws, the overall experience is quite good. The film is accompanied by a stereo piano score.

The silent films are listed with incorrect release years on the packaging. And, the three sound films appear in their best-ever presentations on DVD home video.

We can only hope that the Hitchcock family will continue to release home video editions of Hitch’s earliest films, so that they might all be available to collectors in these high-quality presentations. We highly recommend this edition of The Manxman.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

Our initial excitement at the appearance of five of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent films on DVD has been tempered considerably by the lack of any improvement in quality over existing editions on VHS videotape. This DVD edition of The Manxman, however, is an improvement over the two videotape versions of the film we have seen.

Whether it is a shortcoming of the video transfer or a flaw of the source print, once again viewers will have to put up with a picture and intertitles that are cropped too tightly on the left side. Some cropping also occurs on the top and bottom of the picture but is seldomly extreme enough to crop off the tops of heads. The defect is only marginally helped by the lack of overscan cropping on most HD monitors. We will advocate once again for the windowboxing of silent films to capture the maximum viewable picture area for all televisions and to keep as much of the intertitles readable as possible.

While the video transfer has its problems, this DVD finally represents the best-looking picture quality for The Manxman on home video. There is some picture jitter in places and occasionally compression artifacts can be seen in flat light to medium graytones. Ultimately, the tight, off-center framing is our only nagging complaint of this budget-priced DVD that features an otherwise good looking transfer from what appears to be a very-good 16mm print. The film has been transferred at a proper running speed. Occasional print scratches, some speckling, and contrastiness in the final two reels that causes some highlight detail to disappear constitute the source print flaws.

An orchestral score has been cobbled together from a variety of canned sources, including LP records (pops and crackles intact) and hissing audiotape. While the music editing is rough, some attempt has been made to keep the music appropriate to the film’s action. A minor production error causes the disc to stop in the player when the Off option is selected in the Subtitles menu.

For the collector who is looking to acquire all of the silent Hitchcock films on home video, this DVD is the best edition currently available of The Manxman and we recommend it over the Brentwood edition noted below. Let’s hope, however, that someone can be coaxed to produce quality video editions of all of Hitchcock’s surviving silent films.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This edition has been mastered to a full-frame and slightly too-fast video transfer from a very-good 16mm reduction print. The framing of the source print is off, as was the source print for the Laserlight edition noted above, with a little too much of the left side of the original picture cropped off. The lack of overscan cropping on an HD monitor helps slightly.

The graytone values are a bit flat, with gray shadows and grayish highlights, but the visual quality is good, and is a passible viewing experience despite a small number of video master glitches.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

Other silent era Alfred Hitchcock films available on DVD home video:
Blackmail (1929)
Champagne (1928)
Downhill (1927)
Easy Virtue (1927)
The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
The Lodger (1926)
The Ring (1927)

Other British silent era films available on DVD home video:
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1912-1921)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)
Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (1900-1906)
Hindle Wakes (1927)
The Informer (1929)
Livingstone (1925)
Moulin Rouge (1928)
Piccadilly (1929)
The Return of the Rat (1929)
The Woman He Scorned (1929)