“For the first time,” Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote of The Manxman, “Hitchcock penetrated a domain that has since become dear to him—vertigo.” The intractability of a love triangle and the agonizing claustrophobia of false appearances are the true subjects of Hitchcock’s final silent picture. The director told Truffaut that he felt constrained by the popularity of Sir Hall Caine’s source novel, but a distressing wedding ceremony and despairing suicide attempt are unmistakably Hitchcock’s own inventions. The dynamic location photography of the battered English coast owes to cinematographer Jack Cox, the brazen sensuality to Czech actress Anny Ondra.