JAMAICA INN

In the late 18th century, a young Irish orphan named Mary Yellen (Maureen O’Hara) leaves Ireland for Cornwall. She arrives at the ‘Jamaica Inn’, a infamous place run by her Aunt Patience and her husband Joss. The Justice of the Peace of the county is Sir Hemphrhey Pengallan (Charles Laughton), an ambiguous and slimy man who immediately falls in love with her: Mary does not love him back and feels only disgust and fear for him. The girl discovers that the inn is the hideout of a group of pirates who, with the help of light signals, lure ships to the rocks to plunder them after slaughtering the crew and passengers. She goes to Pengallan for help, but he is the leader of the gang. While Joss is killed by the bandits who think he is a traitor, Pengallan kills Patience and forces Mary to follow him on a ship to France. The last film of Hitchcock’s English period, Jamaica Inn was truncated by critics but praised by audiences, both because of the famous names of Hitchcock and Laughton and because it laid the foundations for a genre that would later become very successful in England, the costume drama.