Directed by Alfred Hitchcock II: Back for Christmas, Bon Voyage, & Aventure Malgache

Back for Christmas
USA 1956. Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: John Williams, Isobel Elsom, Arthur Gould-Porter, Lillian Kemble-Cooper

On the eve of a trip to California, a murder-minded English husband plots what he thinks will be the perfect crime. Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Season 1. B&W, Digibeta video. 30 mins.

Bon Voyage
Great Britain 1944. Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: John Blythe, The Molière Players

One of two wartime rarities Hitchcock made in French for the British Ministry of Information — Aventure Malgache, also screening in this program, is the other — Bon Voyage is a taut espionage thriller employing some crafty narrative trickery. A downed RAF airman escapes from German captivity and makes his way through occupied France, assisted by agents of the French Resistance. Only later does he learn that all was not quite what it seemed to be. The shadowy Expressionist cinematography is by Günther Krampf, who shot the Pabst masterpiece Pandora's Box. B&W, Digibeta video, in French with English subtitles. 26 mins.

Aventure Malgache
(Madagascar Landing)
Great Britain 1944. Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: The Molière Players

Hitchcock’s dramatization of divisions among the Free French is set in Vichy-controlled Madagascar, where a Resistance leader and a corrupt police official engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. The puzzle-box narrative begins in London, where a group of Free French actors are preparing a play based on the events. The complex treatment of the Free French was deemed insufficiently heroic; the film was never released. “Unmistakably the genuine article... Aventure Malgache abounds in Hitchcockian touches” (Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound). B&W, Digibeta video, in French with English subtitles. 31 mins.