We meet the faces of a man and a woman bickering furiously. Another young man finds a limp body awash on the beach. He runs to get help but two young girls see his response of fleeing across the sand and believe what any normal person would believe. He’s leaving the scene of the crime. Their screams are personified by seagulls a fitting precursor to The Birds years later.

Soon film star Christine Clay covers the tabloids and the fellow finds himself on trial for murder. This is the groundwork for Young and Innocent and we have yet to even meet our heroine.

There’s a bubble-headed lawyer who’s a very nice sort but, nevertheless, a bit of a country bumpkin. Not much for such a high profile case. Thus, no one can blame the accused for fleeing the courtroom in a brief moment of tumult. Hitchcock even finds time to pose as a cameraman outside the courthouse. But more importantly, the wheels begin turning as the fugitive Tisdale calls upon the reluctant help of the local Constable’s daughter Erica Burgoyne.

Erica has become a bit of a matriarch in her family of boys and she’s learned to be a mother, a daughter, and so much more for her father and brothers. Yet soon she’s seemingly become an accessory to an assumed criminal in helping him escape. Because at the core of this story, is a variation on the Hitchcock motif. There are two innocent people on the run trying to get away including Erica who gets whisked away in the moment.

The MacGuffin set out for them to pursue is a purloined raincoat. With it comes the promise of exoneration of the wanted man. But outcomes are never that easy nor the road getting there. It leads to a row of diverting events from a brawl at a roadside rest stop with the local population of bums and even a kiddie birthday party where Erica crawls with anxiety for harboring a wanted criminal in her auntie and uncle’s home.

The story devolves into an entertaining cross-country chase, but in this particular case making its way through the countryside and to a proverbial abandoned mine shaft. These very quaint locales and the small town feel with bumbling policemen and bickering lads around the dinner table make this one feel like one of Hitchcock’s overtly “British” films or maybe one of his most stereotypically British efforts.

Some visual flourishes include a cliffhanger moment captured in typical jarring fashion and equally enjoyable is a fairly expansive crane shot that carries us through a hotel focusing on a certain person in question. Our plucky protagonist has called upon the services of an old hobo to identify the man who contacted him — the man undoubtedly implicated in the murder. Such a scene is pure Hitchcock, directing our gaze in such a way that the image he places in front of us is unavoidable. There’s no doubting his intention and he lays everything out for a fine conclusion.

Blackface aside as a horrible cultural anachronism, this picture comes off well today with Nova Pilbean coming into her own as a charming protagonist who boasts smarts and a disarming drive even as she gets whisked along.  Previously she played a crucial role in Hitchcock’s earlier thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much, but here she’s one of the undisputed stars and she and Derrick De Marney have a solid chemistry working. Of course, it’s not that customary to come to a Hitchcock picture for true romance. Still, Young and Innocent is indubitably worthwhile for aficionados of “The Master of Suspense.”

3.5/5 Stars