BREAKING NEWS: HITCHCOCK'S EARLIEST FILM WORK DISCOVERED

FILM SCREENS SEPT. 22 IN LOS ANGELES


FROM THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:

Alfred Hitchcock's Earliest Surviving Film Found

1:00 AM 8/3/2011 by Mike Barnes

Three reels of 1924’s "The White Shadow" have been discovered in New Zealand.

Just in time for the filmmaker’s 112th birthday, archivists and preservationists in New Zealand have announced the discovery of the first half of a 1924 film thought to be Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest surviving feature.

The film, which stars Betty Compson in a dual role as twin sisters — one angelic and the other “without a soul” — turned up among the cache of unidentified American nitrate prints safeguarded at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington. The first three reels of the six-reel feature were found; no other copy is known to exist.

For The White Shadow, an atmospheric British melodrama picked up for international distribution by Hollywood’s Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises, Hitchcock is credited as assistant director, art director, editor and writer. He was 24 when he worked on the film; his feature directorial debut would come soon afterward on The Pleasure Garden (1925).

“These first three reels of The White Shadow — more than half the film — offer a priceless opportunity to study [Hitchcock’s] visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape,” said David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Still from White Shadow

The title will be preserved at Park Road Post Production in New Zealand, and a new preservation master and exhibition print will be sent to the U.S. Plans for a “re-premiere” screening will be announced this week.

The Hitchcock film was among the many silent-era movies salvaged by New Zealand projectionist and collector Jack Murtagh. After his death in 1989, the highly flammable nitrate prints were sent to the NZFA for safekeeping by Tony Osborne, the collector’s grandson.

Here is a contemporary review of White Shadow from The Times' Film World (Feb. 18, 1924):

THE FILM WORLD.

"THE WHITE SHADOW."

A BRITISH PRODUCTION.

Graham Cutts, the director of White Shadow

The White Shadow, a new British production, is recommended to the public on the ground that it is the work of the same producer, author, and staff, and that it contains the same hero and heroine as Woman to Woman, which was recently criticized in The Times. In spite of that, however, it is to be feared that it is not so good a film as its predecessor. Its inferiority is in the main due to the weakness of its story, for the production is, on the whole, excellent, and the acting of the leading characters leaves nothing to he desired. Miss Betty Compson is as good as ever in an unusually difficult part, or, rather, in two parts, for she has to represent twin sisters, one of whom is virtuous and the other decidedly the opposite. The way in which she does so, especially in scenes where both her contrasted selves have to appear, is a tribute both to her artistry and to the skill of the producer, Mr. Graham Cutts.

The two big situations, however, are so obviously machine-made that they are a little farcical. In the first we are shown the soul of the virtuous sister actually passing from her dead body into the body of the other, and all the photography in the world cannot prevent the scene from being slightly ridiculous. In the other we are shown an admirable example of film tradition. It is necessary that a father, who has gone mad under the stress of domestic affliction, should he restored to sanity, and so, after a lapse of many years, he is casually knocked down by a motor-car driven by his own daughter, whom he has not seen for a long time. The result is obvious. He is not only restored to his normal state, but at once recognizes his daughter. In spite of the weakness of its story, however, the film is worth seeing for the excellent acting of Miss Compson and of Mr. Clive Brook, and for the cleverness of the production.