The German language version of Murder! shot back to back with a German cast. There was one exception, the multi-talent­ed Miles Mander who had played in Hitch­cock’s first film, The Pleasure Garden, who was comfortable enough in the Ger­man language to reprise his role as hus­band of the murdered woman. Hitchcock himself spoke enough German to direct but later confessed in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich that he was at a loss to put across the humour of the English ver­sion. It was a problem often encountered in production of the multi lingual films of the early 1930s, a last ditch attempt by the European studios to ally themselves against the might of Hollywood. One significant change was made in that the secret Handle Fane was concealing was not his mixed race but that he was, more prosaically, a convict. Several commenta­tors have assumed that Fane was coded as homosexual – this doesn’t sit logically with the fact that he was supposedly in love with Mary and the racial aspect is given much more force in the book – al­though it is an understandable interpreta­tion given the rather ‘camp’ performance of Esme Percy in the English version and by the character’s appearance in women’s clothing, in the farce at the beginning of the film and later in his ‘drag’ trapeze act.