The Skin Game

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Skin Game follows two families as they engage in a progressively deadly fight over land ownership. It’s far-from-enthralling subject matter that is, right from the word go, employed to shockingly tiresome and sluggish effect by Hitchcock, as the filmmaker, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a stagy endeavor that contains virtually nothing in the way of compelling or attention-grabbing attributes – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by an uneventful narrative that often seems to be unfolding in slow motion (eg there’s an auction sequence that just feels endless). And while the picture contains a very small handful of eye-catching stylistic touches, The Skin Game, for the most part, comes off as an absolutely worthless exercise in tedium that stands in sharp contrast to Hitchcock’s masterful later works.

1/2* out of ****