For all practical purposes, a remake, in German, of "Murder!" It is stark and frantic, but the plot is the same. The editing is flawed and so things do not move fluidly. Also, the actors seem more stiff and less interesting. It's as if Hitchcock felt he could give the German people a gift, but move on quickly. I agree that the tension is much less. The final scene is one of the most dramatic of any the master produced, but here it doesn't have quite the same impact. See it only if you wish to have a full view of early Hitchcock films. That was my motivation.

"Mary" is (even if the title does not sound like it) a German 78-minute film from 1931. The director, but not one of the writers according to IMDb, is the fairly young Alfred Hitchcock. "Young" is relative though in this context as he had been making films at this point already for about a decade. The language here is German and the cast includes a couple somewhat known German actors from back in the day, such as Abel and Tschechowa. This film has its 85th anniversary this year, so it was made 2 years before Nazis came into power in Germany. That's why nobody should be surprised it is a black-and-white film still. But it's not a silent film anymore. I personally did not really care for this crime-related courtroom drama or for any of the characters. It all felt a bit bland to me and I as an audience member did not feel involved whatsoever and with this I mean emotionally or just that I found it interesting enough to move to the edge of my seat. A fairly underwhelming early film by one of the greatest. But if it helped Hitchcock in improving towards what people consider his masterpieces then that's fine for me. I myself am glad this stayed clearly under 90 minutes and I don't recommend the watch. Thumbs down.

For Hitchcock completists only, this German-language version of the same director's Murder! tells the same story on the same sets, but with different cast, as a juror questions the guilty verdict he helped come to.A few mildly amusing visual flairs are present here: jurors seated around a circular table. The camera pans along and we see a first juror held deep in thought; the next several are listening with rapt attention; until we arrive at one man who is clearly bored to tears with it all; a mild joke which was thrown in to the German version, not in the UK version. Brief glimpses (again) of cross-dressing, which Hitch later went back to, in a big way, with Psycho.Some early quick cuts are surprising, eleven cuts in a three seconds-long scene at the twenty three minute mark. Most unconventional at the time.Overall the movie is watchable, but not very involving, partly at least due to its lax pacing, and a verbose screenplay. Like its UK counterpart, however, it does pick up for its memorable climax.

The Hitchcock/Truffaut book,which is actually a very long interview ,something like "the Beatles anthology" in pop music ,gives us many interesting informations about "Mary" ,a movie the master liked.Although he told Truffaut he detested the whodunits ,those riddles a la Agatha Christie,"Mary" featured "things we did for the first time":stream of consciousness,play in the play a la "Hamlet" references to transvestism and even hints at (veiled) homosexuality,which was a "crime" in Great Britain as it was in Germany at the time....That said,the story drags on a bit and the running time could have been boiled down to one hour,which would have enhanced the really good scenes: IT was Herbert Marshall's first talkie and the scene when he's shaving and thinking for a clue renews the way the detective investigates.The unfinished manuscript is also a very good idea.But the bravura passage remains the final circus.One can also note the scene of the verdict we hear from the empty juror's room.There are elements which would appear later in Hitchcock's work: the theater ("Stage fright",also a whodunit,btw),of course "Psycho" (a man in drag) and "vertigo" (the finale which makes you feel dizzy).This is another early Hitchcock which is not only for completists.