'The Ring' will start it off this time

'The Ring' will start it off this time 

Meera Jasmine S

Ashiqha Sultana

 

 Alfred Hitchcock’s silent movie ‘The Ring’ is set to be the opening film at this year’s International Film Festival of Kerala. The 108-minute film will be screened at the Nishaghandhi open air auditorium with a live Orchestra playing the music and background scores instead of the regular Dolby digital surrounding system.
 ‘The Ring’ is Hitchcock’s one and only original screenplay which is first released in 1927 that have been restored by the British Film Institute along with Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films.
 The story is a love triangle melodrama set in the world of boxing, a milieu that fascinated Hitchcock. The title of the film refers not just the boxing ring, but to the wedding ring that unites up-and-coming contender Jack “One Round” Sander (Carl Brisson) and his girlfriend Mabel (Lillian Hall Davis), and to the threat to their relationship symbolized by an arm bracelet given to Mabel by Jack’s rival, Australian boxing champion Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), which eventually becomes a symbol of the love triangle at the centre of the film. The cast of the film includes Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis.
 The plot of the film not that thrilling, but what is exciting to watch is Hitchcock’s growing confidence in the medium; the tension cranks up powerfully at key moments, especially towards and during the final fight sequence. But mainly this is a film to be enjoyed for its details. The symbolism of the various “rings” in the film, the unusual framing and the nascent special effects.   It is clearly influenced by German Expressionism and also it influenced later fight films.
 Boxing is a sport which has been the plot for several great films. This must be because boxing works so well as a metaphor for many other “fights” faced in life.