My debut novel Moonstone Obsession starts with a shipwreck on the coast of Cornwall:
Captain Armsden watched his men tighten the rigging, giving the square-rigged vessel stability in the rising wind and seas. With quick, economical movements, they worked to maintain control of the vessel as it battled the rising swell and blustering gale. February in Cornwall was for sailors, a savage time of year in a savage part of England. Miscalculations saw many a ship run aground on the rocky coast, with cargo and lives lost by the score.
And you can’t have a dramatic shipwreck in Cornwall without thinking of the Daphne Du Maurier classic Jamaica Inn.
Spend Friday Night At the Flicks with Elizabeth Ellen Carter
And you can’t think of Jamaica Inn without recalling Alfred Hitchock’s 1939 adaptation.
Briefly the story is about an orphaned young woman who is sent to live with her aunt and her brutal husband who owns Jamaica Inn, a hideout and gathering point for a bunch of cutthroat thieves and wreckers.
The film differs quite markedly from the source material but it nonetheless underscores Hitchcock’s adroit understanding of the medium and the cinema-goer.
The film still features a strong heroine in Mary (Maureen O’Hara) who despite the implicit threat to her own safety, effects a just in time rescue of her own.
Strong and unconvential heroines – a hallmark of du Maurier’s work – see Rebecca – in which the heroine’s name is never reveal. In the film Hitchcock has rehabilitated the love interest Jem (Robert Newton) who rather than being the petty criminal that is in the novel is actually an under cover law officer.
Maureen O’Hara rescues Robert Newton in Jamaica Inn
If the name Robert Newton is familiar it might be because of a later role – instead of stopping pirates, he becomes one playing Long John Silver in the classic Disney adaptation of Treasure Island.
The Great Charles Laughton is the true villain of the piece and his performance in Jamaica Inn is deliciously creepy despite the fact that Hitchcock considered his mincing portrayal of the country squire to be out of character.
Without spoiling the novel, the villain was supposed to be a corrupt, faithless vicar, but Hollywood’s Production Code had strict rules regarding depictions of the clergy.
Despite mixed reviews of the film itself – according to some it ranks as one of the Fifty Worst Films Of All Time (I would heartily disagree) – it didn’t hurt Hitchcock’s career.
The very next year he made his first Hollywood film for producer David O Selznick who the year earlier made the brilliant but internally troubled film Gone With The Wind.
Film film Hitchcock made in Tinsel Town… Rebecca – starring Laurence Oliver and Joan Fontaine, a film which is much more faithful to the source material (at Selznick’s insistence) – click here for other Rebecca trivia.