This is part of the film preservation blogathon
My first encounter with Jamaica Inn (1939) was in Harry Medved's The 50 Worst Movies of All Time and I'll admit that it colors my memory of the film. Oh, I know that Medved and his collaborators were mostly full of crap (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia? Last Year at Marienbad? The Omen? Seriously?), but the teenage me didn't know any better, and it's hard to shake first impressions. It was years before I was able to actually see the film, though. When I finally tracked it down, it was kind of a disappointment. I mean, it's NOT particularly good, but it's not transcendentally bad, either. I was kind of hoping for transcendentally bad.
Jamaica Inn was the first of three films that Alfred Hitchcock made from Daphne Du Maurier (the other two are Rebecca and The Birds). It was also the last film Hitch made in the UK before he packed up and went to work for Selznick in Hollywood. According to the director himself, it was the most unpleasant experience he ever had behind the camera. It's significant that Jamaica Inn is one of the very few Hitchcock films in which the director does not have a cameo. This last piece of information would have been nice to have when I first saw the film, because when I was originally mainlining Hitchcock films, the director's cameos were something I searched for. You will search in vain for Alfred Hitchcock in this film. My initial impression was a kind of modest delight, given that I have fond memories of the other film that Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara made in 1939.