The Horror!? 40: The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936)

I already explained my thoughts about movies as windows into another time. This is a very interesting, but in no way entertaining case in point. Stephen Hawke is a vehicle for British actor Tod Slaughter who was a popular stage actor in villain roles of Victorian melodramas and most of his films seem to follow the same formulas. He didn't change is acting style for film a single bit, leading to a performance so broad and stagy that Bela Lugosi looks like a most subtle and nuanced actor. Most of the other actors are even worse, while the even in 1936 quaint and old fashioned style of dialogue does nothing to lessen those problems.
My biggest problem with the movie is its (its director's? its star's) unwillingness to actually be a film. There is (again, even given the possibilities of the time) no interest in the visual part of filmmaking. The damn thing even starts as a filmed radio show (complete with vaudevillian song, comedy and interview with Slaughter - who is even more scene-chewing there!) before it transforms into something like a film.
I don't know much about British cinema of the Thirties, so I can't say if this kind of production is more typical of its time and place than more advanced movies, but like to imagine Stephen Hawke as an anachronism.
At least I know now how Victorian popular plays were supposed to be acted.