Young and Innocent, The Lady Vanishes, Jamaica Inn

If Young and Innocent (1937) is the weakest Hitchcock film of this period partly because of poor or insubstantial acting from most of its players, then The Lady Vanishes (1938) is the height of his British career in large part due to the lively excellence of its cast, particularly Michael Redgrave as the all-out charmer hero. But then Hitchcock came to grief directing the demanding Charles Laughton in Jamaica Inn (1939), a film that is lopsidedly centered around Laughton’s self-indulgent, effortful performance, which is filled with lots of face making and external signifiers that could not be further from Hitchcock’s own concept of what acting for the camera should be, which he outlined in detail in a 1939 interview for Film Weekly called “What I’d Do to the Stars.”