Why Alfred Hitchcock’s final British film was a commercial triumph but a personal failure
In short: Before Alfred Hitchcock moved to Hollywood, he directed the 1939 adventure thriller Jamaica Inn. While it became a massive box-office success, the director famously loathed the project. Behind the scenes, producer and star Charles Laughton’s creative interference turned the production into a clash of visions that Hitchcock later called absurd.
Released in 1939, Jamaica Inn was the final film Hitchcock completed in the United Kingdom before relocating to the United States to work with David O. Selznick. Adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 novel, the story follows Mary Yellan, a young woman who discovers that her aunt’s inn in Cornwall is the headquarters for a brutal gang of wreckers. These criminals deliberately extinguish coastal beacons to lure ships onto the rocks, murdering the survivors to steal their cargo. The mastermind behind this operation is the local squire, Sir Humphrey Pengallan, who uses the illicit profits to fund his own lavish lifestyle.
The production was plagued by the heavy-handed involvement of Charles Laughton, who co-produced the film through his company, Mayflower Pictures. Laughton originally intended to play the innkeeper, Joss Merlyn, but cast himself as the villainous Pengallan instead. Because Hollywood’s Production Code forbade unsympathetic portrayals of the clergy, the character was rewritten from a preacher into a squire. Laughton also demanded more screen time for his character, forcing Hitchcock to reveal the villain’s identity much earlier than he had originally planned. Hitchcock even found Laughton’s performance style—which included a mincing walk performed to an internal German waltz—to be entirely out of character.
Despite the film’s financial success, earning US$3.7 million, it was poorly received by critics who felt it lacked the dark, sinister atmosphere of du Maurier’s original novel. The author herself was so displeased with the adaptation that she briefly considered withholding the rights to her next work, Rebecca. Hitchcock remained disappointed with the project, which is now generally regarded as one of his lesser works. While it launched the career of Maureen O’Hara, whom Laughton insisted on casting after seeing her eyes in a screen test, the film remains a testament to the friction between a legendary director and a powerful, interfering star.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Jamaica Inn (film)
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