This is an episodic, semi-comic, morality tale of a bored bourgeois London couple who adventitiously receive a gift of an around-the-world trip, (Henry Kendall and Joan Barry). It's the answer to Kendall's dreams. Joy reigns, for a few minutes anyway, until the trip starts. He gets sea sick on the cross-channel boat. They get drunk in Paris. Then, leurs malheurs, the ship out of Marseilles turns into a more serious business. He has an affair with a "princess" who turns out to be a fraud who milks him of his money. Kendal's wife and an honest, avuncular fellow fall for each other. The couple plan to part, but then Kendall discovers he's been had, and Barry realizes she can't leave Kendall because he's such an impractical wimp. They get together again, deserted by their lovers, in Singapore, almost penniless.
Their humble, outbound ship is involved in a collision and they are left alone aboard her as she slowly gurgles into the sea. Rescued by a Chinese junk manned by an indifferent crew, they find they've inadvertently eaten the ship's black cat. They finally reach London and begin arguing again.
I referred to it as a morality tale. I'm trying to think of how the moral might be most ergonomically expressed. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"? "All that glitters is not gold"? "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started"? "There's no place like home"? I think I know what Hitchcock was getting at in the title, "Rich and Strange." It's a quote from a song in Shakespeare's "The Tempest". In the play it tells us that a skeleton buried in the sea will undergo not corruption but an enrichment because of barnacles, sea anemones, and the attendant varicolored tropical fish. Hitchcock turns it upside down. The sea will not turn a dead thing (like a marriage) into something beautiful. It will just rot. I'm guessing at the irony, true, but I'm open to other less banal suggestions.
Anyway, it's quite a trip, not a trifling thing like some of Hitchcock's other early works (eg., "Champagne"). A comic spinster with thick glasses is introduced on the long voyage aboard the liner. At the costume party, she is dressed either as Margaret Mead or Big Bo Peep. And there is some genuine tension when their last crummy ship is sinking around them. The suspense is enhanced because the couple seem so extravagantly stupid. Here they are on an empty sea, alone on a ship that could turn end up and go down like a lead line at any moment and what do they do? They're in their night clothes, so they'd better find something to put on -- "in case somebody comes." Next step? "Perhaps we should find a raft or something." But, no. They step over a dead crew member and find a brandy bottle instead.
In some ways the most interesting episode is aboard the Chinese junk, the one on which they see a baby being born and roughly handled by the family, the one on which they eat the cat. None of the Chinese seem to celebrate the birth. They simply pour a bucket of cold sea water over the howling neonate. Barry's maternal instincts are aroused and she becomes indignant. "Leave them alone," advises Kendall, "The Chinese breed like devils anyway." (Not so much anymore, Hank.) The incident is interesting because Hitchcock was never big on babies OR family sentiment. There's a baby on the "Lifeboat", of course, but it's already past sentimentality.
Not to run out of space here. Joan Barry is a blond, pretty in a Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio kind of way, with her eyes set wide apart, but with a thin, porcelain figure that might shatter if handled indelicately. Her role is that of the serious partner, and she fits the role. Henry Kendall is supposed to be itchier, edgier, less stable, funny, and he looks just about right as well. His features are basically a comic. Hitchcock deploys some directorial techniques that may seem humdrum now but were unquestionably more novel when he used them. They're simple enough. A drunk's point of view with the camera out of focus. A menu from which the items spring out at a nauseous man. If it's not among Hitchcock's best, it's certainly not one of his flops.
Their humble, outbound ship is involved in a collision and they are left alone aboard her as she slowly gurgles into the sea. Rescued by a Chinese junk manned by an indifferent crew, they find they've inadvertently eaten the ship's black cat. They finally reach London and begin arguing again.
I referred to it as a morality tale. I'm trying to think of how the moral might be most ergonomically expressed. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"? "All that glitters is not gold"? "The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started"? "There's no place like home"? I think I know what Hitchcock was getting at in the title, "Rich and Strange." It's a quote from a song in Shakespeare's "The Tempest". In the play it tells us that a skeleton buried in the sea will undergo not corruption but an enrichment because of barnacles, sea anemones, and the attendant varicolored tropical fish. Hitchcock turns it upside down. The sea will not turn a dead thing (like a marriage) into something beautiful. It will just rot. I'm guessing at the irony, true, but I'm open to other less banal suggestions.
Anyway, it's quite a trip, not a trifling thing like some of Hitchcock's other early works (eg., "Champagne"). A comic spinster with thick glasses is introduced on the long voyage aboard the liner. At the costume party, she is dressed either as Margaret Mead or Big Bo Peep. And there is some genuine tension when their last crummy ship is sinking around them. The suspense is enhanced because the couple seem so extravagantly stupid. Here they are on an empty sea, alone on a ship that could turn end up and go down like a lead line at any moment and what do they do? They're in their night clothes, so they'd better find something to put on -- "in case somebody comes." Next step? "Perhaps we should find a raft or something." But, no. They step over a dead crew member and find a brandy bottle instead.
In some ways the most interesting episode is aboard the Chinese junk, the one on which they see a baby being born and roughly handled by the family, the one on which they eat the cat. None of the Chinese seem to celebrate the birth. They simply pour a bucket of cold sea water over the howling neonate. Barry's maternal instincts are aroused and she becomes indignant. "Leave them alone," advises Kendall, "The Chinese breed like devils anyway." (Not so much anymore, Hank.) The incident is interesting because Hitchcock was never big on babies OR family sentiment. There's a baby on the "Lifeboat", of course, but it's already past sentimentality.
Not to run out of space here. Joan Barry is a blond, pretty in a Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio kind of way, with her eyes set wide apart, but with a thin, porcelain figure that might shatter if handled indelicately. Her role is that of the serious partner, and she fits the role. Henry Kendall is supposed to be itchier, edgier, less stable, funny, and he looks just about right as well. His features are basically a comic. Hitchcock deploys some directorial techniques that may seem humdrum now but were unquestionably more novel when he used them. They're simple enough. A drunk's point of view with the camera out of focus. A menu from which the items spring out at a nauseous man. If it's not among Hitchcock's best, it's certainly not one of his flops.