| The Ring | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Theatrical release poster
|
|
Hitchcock wrote and directed The Ring, a British silent boxing melodrama, starring Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis and Ian Hunter.
The film was made at Elstree Studios by the newly established British International Pictures, one of two British major studios in the late 1920s.
Hitchcock was 28, and this was his fourth film. It was his first film for the company after leaving Gainsborough Pictures. The Ring was also the first film released by the company.
Attending boxing matches in London, Hitch was struck by the class of the spectators, who were from good backgrounds and dressed in white. He also noticed that fighters were sprinkled with champagne at the end of each round. These details persuaded him to start working on this story.
After directing Downhill and Easy Virtue, two stage adaptations for previous company, the frustrated Hitchcock enjoyed developing his own idea.
The Ring is Hitchcock’s original screenplay, though it had input from Eliot Stannard, who wrote all of Hitchcock’s other silent films.
Writing for silents came naturally to a director who already thought in visual terms; he was less comfortable with dialogue. He took no sole writing credit in any later films, although he worked extensively alongside other writers throughout his career.
Royal Albert Hall
The film was considered a major technical challenge for using the Schüfftan process to simulate large audiences in climactic scenes in the Royal Albert Hall. Hitchcock returned to this technique in the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much in its Royal Albert Hall sequence.
The film was a critical success but a box-office failure.
A restoration of The Ring was completed in 2012, part of the BFI’s £2 million “Save the Hitchcock 9” project to restore the director’s surviving silent films.
Credits:
Directed by Hitchcock
Written by Hitchcock, Eliot Stannard (uncredited)
Produced by John Maxwell
Cinematography Jack E. Cox
Production: British International Pictures
Distributed by Wardour Films
Release date: Oct 1, 1927 (UK)
Running time: 108 minutes (2012 restoration)
