JAMAICA INN (1939) **1/2 Hitchcock directs, but not enough to entirely drown out the Daphne du Maurier novel. I mean, you could just hide by stepping around the corner in those days? Everyone's after Maureen O'Hara and her series of damp dresses and undergarments, of course-pirates and tavern owners and wicked noblemen-but no one can catch her as she hides in plain sight on the roof, or behind a blade of grass... And catch her they should! Why, she's ruining every criminal activity and abuse of human rights in Cornwall. Still, she's always fun and admirable, and Charles Laughton does even better in somehow making the aristocratic cad sympathetic. Mix in Robert Newton and some effective pirates around the corners, and you have some fine actors working for a good, but not yet particularly adventurous or dazzling, director, in the service of an entertaining script desperately in need of a major edit or two. It's as difficult to say anything bad about it as to say anything especially good, but Hitchcock's straightforward approach to the violent ambiguity of the seas should be enough.
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