Early Alfred Hitchcock film about a feud between two wealthy neighbors, one from old money and one from new. Not among Hitchcock's best, even limited to this decade. It's a talky, somewhat stagy affair with unlikable characters and a lack of a clear point. Edmund Gwenn is fun to watch at times, and the cast on the whole is good, but the script is dull and the direction surprisingly lifeless. Even good actors can't save it. Worth a look for Hitchcock fans but keep expectations low.

This early talkie suffers from the fact Hitchcock was rather hemmed in by the John Galsworthy play it's adapted from. He wasn't allowed to influence the script it as much as he was later in his career, and so it's not quite as human as you'd expect. And of course some of the characters' attitudes (especially towards women) are very much of their time.As a grim drama, it's not bad at all. It's a decent story with a good old-fashioned moral at the end of it. Edmund Gwenn is an actor I would loved to have seen on stage in his heyday, and his performance is excellent here - it's just a shame it's all-but-ruined by his horrendous Generic Middle Class Industrialist Regional Accent, which seems to be half Yorkshire and half Brummie. There are a couple of interesting moments in terms of filmmaking - the hectic market scene; a cut from what we think is a view out of the window to a poster on a wall; and of course the rather daring (for the time) whip pans in the auction scene. Hitchcock also chooses to have several large chunks of dialogue delivered off screen, too, another in the long list of Voyeuristic Hitchcock Moments.Verdict: If you're looking for classic Hitchcock, look elsewhere. yetanotherfilmreviewblog.tumblr.com

When Alfred Hitchcock made "The Skin Game," he wasn't yet Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense. He was a fledgling filmmaker still learning his craft just as movies were learning to talk. And to make things more challenging, he was lumbered with this yarn, a stuffy story of a socially prominent family versus an arrogant upstart in rural England. Fortunately, the upstart is played to the smarmy hilt by Edmund Gwenn. And one scene -- the auction of a woodland that Gwenn wants to level as a factory site -- is a brilliant exercise in cross-cutting. Otherwise, the escalating battle between old and new money -- culminating in the death of a terrified young bride -- is stiff and clunky No wonder, just putting the performers in proximity to the microphones was an adventure, especially when the setting was a grand old country manse. It's worth seeing if only to appreciate that not every director starts out as a wunderkind.

John Galsworthy was one of the most popular British novelists of the early twentieth century - his main claim to fame was "The Forsyth Saga" a long series of books following the fortunes of an extended family, principally the older son Soames and his obsession with wealth and property. He also wrote plays - most popular was "The Skin Game".The plot dealt with two families of differing social types in rural England just after the the First World War. The Hillcrists have lived in the same manor house for generations. They are "old money" and the shambling Squire can be seen as a representative of the type of aristocracy who actually caused the Great War. The Hornblowers, on the other hand, are "nouveau riche" and the single minded father (stunningly played by Edmund Gwenn), much to the Squire's disgust has just evicted family retainers, the Jackman's, and plans to surround the Hillcrist estate with factories. Even though Hornblower doesn't have "ancestors" he believes the future belongs to his kind and that the Hillcrists are an anachronism and obstruction to prosperity.To me there is not much attempt to bring the play out from it's stage origins and the only time Hitchcock puts his stamp on it was during the auction scene (but that was also a highlight of the stage play as well). The camera catches the excitement and frenzy of a bidding war during the auction of "The Sentry" - a residential parklike acreage that Hillcrist wants to preserve as the last bit of open land. Hornblower is eventually the winner but due to the shenanigans of Hillcrist, is forced to pay twice it's value and he is furious. The Hillcrists are also angry but plan to get even after hearing of the dark past of Chloe, who is married to Charles, Hornblower's son. Jill Hillcrist (Jill Edmonds) stands in the middle, drawn to Rolf (Frank Lawton) but hating what the family stands for.Chloe was once a professional co-respondent employed by a London agency and Mrs. Hillcrist and their unscrupulous agent Dawker plan to use it to the family's advantage, even though the Squire is above such muckraking. The play was similar to Galsworthy's "The Forsyth Saga" in that it was about social change and the breakdown of conventional class structure. Written at the beginning of the 1920s, an era which saw the rise of the middle class - in the film represented by the ambitious Dawker. Among the players - Jill Esmond, at the time married to Laurence Olivier, went to Hollywood with him but never seemed to photograph as youthful or engagingly as in this movie. Frank Lawton also went to Hollywood where he starred in "David Copperfield". Edmund Gwenn had a massive career in Hollywood but he quickly found a niche in "kindly old gentlemen" roles and never had the variety he did in his British movies. John Longden was in a few early Hitchcocks, went to Australia for a few years and appeared in the controversial "The Silence of Dean Maitland" (1934).