Film’s Title: Young and Innocent Cast: Nova Pilbeam (Erica Burgoyne), Derrick de Marney (Robert Tisdall), Percy Marmont (Col. Burgoyne, Erica’s father), Edward Rigby (Old Will) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller Based on the novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey. Following a couple fight based on an alleged infidelity of the wife, the film star, Christine Clay, is found dead on the beach. A young writer, Robert Tisdall (Derrick de Marney), who had financial difficulties and previously benefitted of the generosity of Christine Clay, discovered her body while he was having a morning walk on the beach. Instead of finding inspiration, he found the dead body of a woman he knew and he was accused of her murder. He escaped during the trail and was helped to prove his innocence by Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam) the daughter of Colonel Burgoyne (Percy Marmont). She liked this young man, and she wanted to believe in his innocence, then she got convinced of his innocence and they searched together for the crucial evidence against his murder charge.
Erica is a character that grew during this movie although her humanism stayed constant. This is shown at the beginning of the movie when she helped Robert to recover conscience. And at the end, when unconsciously, she helped the murderer to recover conscience. The symmetry Hitchcock succeeded is amazing! Probably, the best line is the one at the end, when Erica insisted on helping the man on the floor: ‘Can’t you just be human once?’ But then she discovered that she was trying to be human with the murderer himself who laughed sarcastically about the murder he enjoyed committing and had no sense of guilt on his consciousness that a young and innocent writer was falsely accused of murder.
This is a great observation of life. It does happen to treat and to speak nicely to people that behind your back, they work to hurt you. For those of us, endowed with an overdose of humanism it is hard to understand why some people does that. I, personally, keep distance from them because I have no interest in befriending with this type of people. What do you do? In Erica’s case, it helped discover the murder. I let you reflect on that. And to enjoy the movie!
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