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Alfred Hitchcock’s fifth silent film, Easy Virtue, was considered lost for nearly fifty years, until a few abridged 16mm copies were discovered in the 1970s. Those well-worn, compromised prints remain the best available versions of the film. But this is at least a better fate than that of Hitchcock’s second film, 1926’s The Mountain Eagle, a film which remains completely lost as of 2026.
Easy Virtue stars Isabel Jeans (Downhill) as Larita, an innocent woman whose brutish husband (Franklin Dyall) divorces her on false grounds of adultery. Shunned by the public, she flees to the French Riviera where she falls in love with a younger man named John Whittaker (Downhill‘s Robin Irvine) who proposes to her. They marry, but John’s wealthy family is immediately suspicious of Larita. His mother (Violet Farebrother, also from Downhill) does her best to turn her son against his new wife. Her efforts finally succeed when the family learns of Larita’s divorce. Tired of protesting her innocence, Larita decides to end her second marriage by living down to their expectations. She modifies an evening gown to reveal a scandalous amount of skin, then flaunts herself at a big party. The second divorce comes, and the news photographers descend upon Larita. The film ends with her telling them, “Shoot! There’s nothing left to kill.”
Hitchcock later regretted that last line, but I think it underscores the best part of the film — Larita’s unfair sexual crucifixion. If Easy Virtue were more streamlined to serving that theme, I might have liked it more. But instead, the film divides its time and focus. The first half is spent on the drama between Larita, her first husband, and the painter who wants to have an affair with her (Eric Bransby Williams). The second half is far more interesting, once the Whittaker family enters the picture. The earlier storyline might have felt more organic to the later one if it were treated as a carefully placed flashback. As it is, Easy Virtue feels like two different, only slightly connected stories.
Hitchcock opens up the story, based on Noel Coward’s play, with plenty of outdoor locations and narrative preamble, but doesn’t contribute as many cinematic touches as he does with some of his other silent films. The acting is serviceable from Jeans, Irvine, and Farebrother, while Dyall and Williams give more exaggerated performances in the style of older silent movies. Easy Virtue is probably of most interest to hardcore Hitchcock fans, who will observe early indications of the director’s interests as a storyteller, including the wrongfully accused, the threatening shadow of the law, and the punishment of sexual indiscretion.