Erotic Intertitle of the Week: Sex Challenge ’28

From Hitchcock’s THE FARMER’S WIFE. A startling statement, which doesn’t really get much clearer in context. Maybe that’s what I like about it. Most of the stuff in this film that’s of interest is the stuff that doesn’t quite make sense in a comedy. Hitch himself said, “It was largely a title film.”

So it’s fulfilled its destiny by appearing in this slot, anyhow.

Hitch seems to have tried to minimize the walls of text by having some of the dialogue enunciated so clearly that we can actual lip-read the plot, like HAL 9000. Although Truffaut praised this, I wonder if it caused any problems when the film was screened abroad? I guess extra titles could be inserted if needed. The principle that a film has to work primarily on its home turf if it’s going to have any chance of travelling is a sound one — compromise for the international market often kills a film before it even reaches a domestic public. When Hitch went to America he felt such issues were behind him, since making a film for Americans meant making it for the world, as “America is composed of foreigners anyway.”