Written by: John Galsworthy, Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville
Starring: Edmund Gwenn, Helen Haye, C. V. France, Jill Esmond, John Longden, Phyllis Konstam
Rating: [3.5/5]
When battling others in the game of moving funds within the upper class, these folk can fall into the tendency to forget their machinations impact individual people. Something often quite forgotten but certainly leaves its mark in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Skin Game where a simple land dispute creates some horrific unintended consequences. Brief, impactful, and well-crafted for its era, this fourth talkie by the legendary director makes its mark.
Enjoying the game selling properties from under his tenants, Mr. Hornbllower (Edmund Gwenn) meets his match with the Hillcrists led by Jack Hillcrist (C. V. France), who refuse to play along. When the battle between them begins they will ensure to use whatever means necessary in order to gain the upper hand in the situation, even if it involves some collateral damage on the way.
Operating as a stage play adaptation onto the big screen for a feature film, The Skin Game consists of characters sitting in rooms and talking limiting the visual dynamism in play for the feature which posits some limits the feature needs to overcome in order to through its screenplay and performances in order to remain engaging throughout. Luckily, this story has quite the narrative to tell through its characters, which seemingly presents a battle between two feuding families over the land, but the lengths they go through in order to assert their dominance does raise some eyebrows, especially when achieving the unintended consequences.
Morally, this feature looks at the power of money in this society and the way it can certainly drive people to lose their humanity and regard for their fellow person. Something where they see the value of their land as holding much more importance than the individuals inhabiting it and the way of life they could possibly experience. It manages this balance through the battles between these two families where the money at a certain point becomes immaterial to fissures between them. Instead, it becomes about getting the upper hand and frankly coercing the other side to acquiesce to their demands. Thus begins a game of chess in order in order to gain an advantage and strike while the iron’s hot in order to score a victory.
Much of this battling takes place among the patriarchs of the family, Mr. Hornblower and Jack Hillcrist as they try to make these deals in order to get the best of the situation but it becomes no doubt these two would fall into the well-known adage of cutting your nose to spite your face with the madness they have would endure in order to have the control over a specific piece of land so they can do what they want. This encapsulates the battle between whether they should or whether they can in quite an effective manner.
With the focus lying on these two families, they still exist within a larger society, which likes to stick its nose in the business of others. This includes individuals of the same class and those below who love to take a rumor and run with it for the sake of being in on the gossip. It demonstrates the natural inquisitiveness of people and just how much nosiness people can display in order to fully get some level of entertainment from the circumstance even if they do not necessarily receive anything of benefit from the squabble. The larger concept of knowing what goes and even fanning the flame certainly increases the temperature of this situation.
As the master of tension, Hitchcock still operated in the earlier stages of his directorial career but he certainly displayed some glimpses of what he would master later on. The specific tension revolves around an indiscretion that would crumble one of the families to their core and the fact this truth could make it out to the masses creates a sense of stress of trying to get ahead of it. Once the indiscretion gets revealed it becomes a matter of when more individuals become aware of it rather than if and the tension lies on what will happen once this occurs. As the feature displays, it gets quite bad.
Effective in its storytelling and a decent feature within the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock, The Skin Game really gets at the callousness some humans have when considering the feelings of others and the impacts their actions could have. Quite the contentious face-off between two families with their own monetary support and the lengths they go to in order to preserve their funds and dignity leads to the climax of this feature and the tragedy of forgetting the consequences of their actions.
Films with Josh 
