Cinema Can Do Champagne: Champagne

Since the very beginning, Arsenal has designed posters for certain program series. These posters have enjoyed considerable popularity and are sold at the cinema box office. The poster announcing Hitchcock 9, a series of obscure silent films by Alfred Hitchcock, was particularly popular and sold out rapidly. The poster design – an overexcited flapper girl in an oversized champagne goblet saying cheers to the observer with a raised champagne bottle – stems from CHAMPAGNE, a comedy which Hitchcock himself didn’t rate (to err is human), but which is amusing, fleet-footed and experiments with all manner of visual tricks. The film centers on the effervescent champagne magnate’s daughter Betty (Betty Balfour), who deals with her sudden shift to seeming poverty by working as a flower girl in an upmarket restaurant where the champagne also flows. The characteristic Hitchcock touch in a film that otherwise feels atypical of his work can be seen in the figure of the sinister “man” who hunts Betty and becomes increasingly pushy with her. (mg)