The Ring (1927 film)

The Ring is a 1927 British silent drama directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in which two boxers, a fairground fighter and a professional champion, become rivals for the same woman. It was Hitchcock's sixth film as a director, his first for British International Pictures (BIP), and the only film of his career for which he received sole writing credit on an original story of his own.^{1 • 2}

Production

Hitchcock joined British International Pictures in June 1927, shortly after completing Easy Virtue for Gainsborough. John Maxwell, the Scottish distributor who had formed the new studio, offered a higher salary of £13,000 per annum, more creative freedom, and better facilities. Maxwell was probably hoping for another thriller after the success of The Lodger (1927), but when asked what he wanted to make, Hitchcock chose a melodrama about boxing.^{3 • 2}

An original scenario. As early as April 1927 Hitchcock had been discussing a film built around boxing, and the scenario was complete before he joined BIP. Although he is the sole named writer in the credits, there is evidence that Eliot Stannard and Walter C. Mycroft were also involved in its development. Colleagues at the studio were impressed by the script's structure, and writing for silent films suited a director who thought in visual terms; Hitchcock was much less comfortable with dialogue, which helps explain why he took no sole writing credit on any later film.^{3 • 1}

Casting and crew. According to the biographer Patrick McGilligan, Hitchcock had more control over casting than he had enjoyed at Gainsborough and hand-picked Lillian Hall-Davis, Carl Brisson, and Ian Hunter as the three leads, with Gordon Harker as Jack's trainer. The cinematographer was Jack Cox, an expert at in-camera effects such as dissolves, overlays, and double exposures; Hitchcock had to train him after losing his original cameraman in a salary dispute, and Cox went on to photograph all of Hitchcock's BIP films.^{3 • 2}

Filming. Principal photography took place in July and August 1927. With a larger budget than Hitchcock had previously worked with, the fairground used in the opening section was built on the lot at Elstree Studios, with hundreds of extras. For the climax, Hitchcock experimented with the Schüfftan process, a mirror-based compositing technique, to stage the fight as if inside the Royal Albert Hall, a venue whose championship bouts he had attended and whose interior appears in the film through visual sleight of hand.^{3 • 1}

Visual style

The film is suffused with expressionist touches, using symbolism and heavily stylised shots to convey mood, probably influenced by Hitchcock's time working in Germany, where filmmakers had pioneered cinematic expressionism in pictures such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922).⁹

Hitchcock used visual devices to render emotion directly: superimpositions and distorted lenses show jealousy, and the bubbles in a glass of champagne go flat at the moment Jack realizes his wife has been unfaithful. The rival's face appears on the hero's punchball. The fairground opening, with the camera moving inside the attractions and noise conveyed through close-ups of a drum and a showman's open mouth, anticipates the director's mature style. His way of filming boxing, with multiple angles and the camera placed in the heart of the ring, and the knockout rendered by blurring the image, was later echoed in films such as Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1981).^{7 • 10 • 6}

One montage sequence, the piano-playing scene, so impressed contemporary audiences that it received a round of applause at the film's premiere.¹¹

Reception

The Ring was not a commercial success but was greeted warmly by critics. The Bioscope called it "the most magnificent British film ever made," and the film left no doubt that BIP had a great director on its hands. Later critics have ranked it among the finest of Hitchcock's silent films; the French critics Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol earmarked it as a turning point in his early career, and Time Out called it "arguably the finest of Hitchcock's silent films."^{2 • 12 • 11}

The film contains racial material typical of its period: at a fairground sideshow, visitors pelt a black man appearing as a "human coconut shy" with rotten fruit, and an onscreen caption reads, "If you win this fight with the n****r, you'll be in the running for the championship." The British Board of Film Classification notes that these attitudes and this language reflect the period in which the film was made.¹³

Restoration

The original 1927 nitrate camera negative (early flammable celluloid film stock that decomposes over time) of the British domestic version had decomposed. The BFI National Archive had received the negative from the Associated British Picture Corporation in 1959, when it was already severely unstable, and immediately made a fine grain positive (high-quality duplicate print made to preserve the original); this became the main source for restoration. A nitrate positive of a French version, held by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, was brought in as a reference.^{4 • 14 • 8}

Comparing the British and French material frame by frame revealed that the shots are completely different in the two versions: scenes had been reshot with the same setups for two separate negatives, a discovery that illuminated studio filmmaking practice of the period. The restoration, carried out with Deluxe 142 as part of the "Hitchcock 9" project, scanned the fine grain element at 2K resolution, corrected defects of definition, contrast, and warping, and reconstructed the intertitles using a handcrafted font recreated from the originals. The restored version premiered on 13 July 2012 at the Hackney Empire in London with a new jazz score by Soweto Kinch, and was screened at the Cannes Film Festival that May to a warm reception.^{14 • 8 • 15}

At the end of 2022, 95 years after its original release, The Ring entered the public domain in the United States.⁸

Versions and running times

Reported running times differ because they reflect different versions and projection speeds. The Silent Era database records the film as eight reels, with reference books listing lengths of 8,400, 8,007, and 8,454 feet. Modern presentations range from about 89 minutes (Rotten Tomatoes lists 1h 29m) to 101 minutes (BFI), 106 minutes (BBFC), 108 minutes (the Rialto Pictures restoration), and 116 minutes (Cineuropa and the Sala46 catalog).^{4 • 11 • 9 • 13 • 12 • 5}

References

1. The Ring, program notes by the BFI National Archive, San Francisco Silent Film Festival
2. Brian Cady, "The Ring (1928)", Turner Classic Movies
3. The Ring (1927), The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
4. The Ring (1927), Progressive Silent Film List, Silent Era
5. The Ring, Cineuropa
6. The Ring, Sala46 Films catalogue
7. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (PDF)
8. Alfred Hitchcock Collectors Guide: The Ring (1927), Brenton Film
9. The Ring (1928), BFI
10. Les débuts anglais d'Alfred Hitchcock, Le Monde (2025)
11. The Ring, Rotten Tomatoes
12. Alfred Hitchcock: The Ring, Harvard Film Archive (PDF)
13. The Ring, British Board of Film Classification
14. Restoring Hitchcock #3: finding the best materials, BFI
15. Classic Hollywood: Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Ring', Los Angeles Times (2012)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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