The Ring

Arguably the finest of Hitchcock's silent films, this tale of a fairground boxer (Brisson) whose wife takes a shine to the far more socially sophisticated new champion (Hunter), sees the young director completely confident in his control of the medium. The title is ambivalent, referring not only to the boxing-ring (scene of Brisson's first humiliation), to the wedding-ring and to the bracelet Hunter secretly gives to his rival's wife, but also to the circular shape of the story, which stresses the philanderer's apathy when his adulterous affair comes to nothing. Impressive, too, is Hitchcock's keen eye for social detail, and his command of expressionist visual devices to suggest his characters' states of mind, perhaps most memorably a shot which 'melts' off the screen to evoke the cuckold's drunken slide into oblivion.