Downhill is a 1927 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Roddy (Ivor Novello) is a young man born of wealth and privilege attending a fancy prep school. He makes the mistake of going with his roommate Tim to spend time with Mabel, a particularly slutty maid/cashier. Mabel is willing to put out for both boys but Roddy declines, so it's Tim who winds up impregnating Mabel. Tim is of considerably more modest means than Roddy, so when gold-digging Mabel goes to the prep school's dean, she puts the finger on Tim. Rather than see his friend's life ruined, Roddy gallantly takes the fall.
That's a bad mistake, because it's Roddy's life that's ruined. He's expelled from prep school. His father chucks him out of the house. He winds up living in a shabby room and working as a backup dancer in musical theater, and things get worse from there.
A young Ian Hunter appears as Archie, a stage actor and a romantic rival of Roddy's.
Tropes:
- As You Know: An older gentleman in formal dress is watching Roddy play rugby. The man next to him says "I wish you had more sons like Roddy to send us, Sir Thomas!" This lets the audience know that the first man is Roddy's father and that Roddy comes from money.
- Book Ends: Scenes of Roddy playing rugby for his prep school are the first and last scenes in the film.
- Death Glare: Both the headmaster and Robby's father give him these when confronting him about knocking up Mabel.
- Dramatic Sit-Down: Roddy, after he's blindsided in the headmaster's office by Mabel accusing him of knocking her up.
- Dutch Angle: Julia, leaning far back in her dressing room chair as her dresser fixes her makeup, tilts her head back to see Roddy coming in. Roddy is shown upside down.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This, Hitchcock's fourth film, isn't a thriller/mystery like most of his later work and lacks his signature Creator Cameo. (Hitchcock didn't start consistently doing cameos until the early 1930s.)
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Working in the chorus of a stage musical might have seemed more degrading in 1927 than it does to a 21st century audience. But Roddy's later job, working as a taxi dancer and probably also as a gigolo in a scuzzy nightclub, definitely qualifies. He has a Thousand-Yard Stare the whole time.
- Footsie Under the Table: Mabel doesn't even bother to use a table, instead rubbing Robby's calf with her foot out in the open. Folks are distracted because everyone's singing the class song, but his father still notices.
- Gold Digger:
- Mabel reveals her motive for fingering Roddy instead of Tim when she says "He's full of money!"
- Julia the actress, who marries Roddy after he inherits £30,000 from a relative. She bleeds him of all his money, then dumps him.
- Hallucinations: Roddy, who seems to be suffering from fever, starts having these near the end. He mistakes a sailor for his father, glaring angrily at him. Then he hallucinates all the people who have wronged him—Mabel, Julia, Archie, the Miss Kitty woman, and the creepy older lady at the club—all together, dividing up his loot.
- Happy Ending: A near-instantaneous one. A desperate Roddy goes back home, only to be greeted by his father, who says that he's learned the truth and asks Roddy's pardon. The movie then cuts to Roddy back at school and again playing rugby, and then the film ends. The whole sequence takes about a minute.
- Miss Kitty: Towards the end Roddy is working as a "taxi dancer" in a nightclub—that is, he's being paid to dance with ladies, but it's strongly implied that he's actually a male prostitute. Part of how it's implied is the depiction of a Miss Kitty older woman, who takes cash from customers and directs Roddy to them.
- Reveal Shot: Uniquely done twice in a row in the same scene.
- Roddy is shown wearing a tux, seemingly indicating that he's doing fine. Then the camera zooms back to reveal that he is actually a waiter, serving drinks.
- Proscenium Reveal: The couple that Roddy is serving gets up and starts dancing, then the camera pans right to reveal that the action is taking place on a stage in an auditorium, and that Robby is actually a background performer in a musical show.
- Shirtless Scene: Ivor Novello had a lot of fangirls during this era, so Hitchcock threw in a fanservice shot of Roddy changing out of his uniform after the rugby match.
- Title Drop: A title card says "Downhill—till what was left of him was thrown to the rats of a Marseilles dockside." The film then cuts to Roddy having hit rock bottom, feverish and suffering hallucinations while lying in a dirty attic room.
- Unexpected Inheritance: Roddy receives £30,000 (well over a million pounds in the 2020s) when a godmother dies. This isn't a Deus ex Machina Happy Ending, though, but merely Act II of his degradation, as Julia the actress marries him and bleeds him of all his money.
- Visual Title Drop: The next scene after Sir Thomas throws Roddy out of the house, ends with a long shot of him taking an escalator downhill to the London Underground. (Decades later Hitchcock regretted this visual metaphor, saying it was too obvious.)
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: When Mabel isn't working as a maid at the prep school, she's working at a bakery with the unbearable name "Ye Olde Bunne Shoppe".
