Review of Easy Virtue

Don't expect typical Hitchcock touches in this early silent of his called Easy Virture since this isn't even a suspense film but more of a melodrama about a divorced woman who can't escape her past, a past in which her then-husband discovered her painter's infatuation with her, which he mistakes for an affair, and gets shot by him but survives though the painter later commits suicide (which I wouldn't have known about if I hadn't read the synopsis on the DVD case back). Shamed by the courts, she flees to France where she falls in love again, marries, and returns to England where her mother-in-law automatically gets suspicious of her. What I just described is something (at least the mother-in-law part) that I've seen on many TV shows and movies that usually ends with the woman winning everyone-or almost everyone-over. Not this time. Personally, I found this mostly boring and some scenes (like the about-to-be-ex-husband "hitting" the painter with his cane that looked so fake) so ludicrous. The only interesting camera angle I saw here was when it cut to the top of the judge's wig before he looked up and his face came in close-up. This happened twice. It probably didn't help that there were no music or sound effects on the DVD I got. So if you're an Alfred Hitchcock completist, by all means see this. Otherwise, worth avoiding.