Hitchcock: The British Years The Silent Era

Champagne

Champagne

            Thoroughly modern flapper Betty (played by Betty Balfour) takes women's liberation a bit too far for her wealthy father, a champagne Baron (Gordon Harker).  Determined to reign in Betty's wild (and, in his view, irresponsible) ways, the father allows Betty to believe that the family fortune, derived from his champagne business, has been lost.  Betty, like Roddy Berwick in Downhill, must suddenly make her own way in the world.

          Unlike Downhill, however, Champagne is a comedy.  It's not a great comedy, but it does prove mildly amusing along the way toward Betty's eventual reconciliation with her still-rich Daddy Bubblybucks.  From an original story by Hitchcock himself.

Production: British International Pictures, 1928, G.B. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Scenario: Eliot Stannard. Director of photography: Jack Cox. Studio: Elstree. Distributor: Wardour & F., 1928. Principal Actors: Betty Balfour (Betty), Gordon Harker (her father), Ferdinand Von Alten (the passenger), Jean Bradin (the young man), and Jack Trevor, Marcel Vibert.

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