Graham Cutts: Hitchcock's Mentor?

Still from Woman to Woman another lost Graham Cutts film which young Alfred worked on

This week's announcement that three reels of The White Shadow has been discovered ricocheted quickly around the Hitchcock universe.  And while the film has Hitchcock's artistic fingerprints, it is most definitely not the discovery of a lost Hitchcock film.  It is the discovery of a lost Graham Cutts film.  Cutts was once Britain's hot filmmaker and Hitch was lucky to work with him--Cutt's growing personal problems and absence from the set during The White Shadow and subsequent films gave the young filmmaker the opportunity to prove himself to Michael Balcon at Gainsborough.

The rough treatment in the press of Cutts is unfair and inaccurate.  By many accounts Graham Cutts was not a pleasant man to work with, but his films were often successful.  And, besides opening the door for Hitchcock, Graham Cutts has a strong place in cinema history.  One of the places is secured by the film embedded here:  The Sign of Four.  Sherlock Holmes fans (of which there are legion) will recognize this fine film--and many of you may own a poorly transferred "dollar" public domain DVD of it.   Among Sherlockians, the actor "Arthur Wontner gives us Sherlock Holmes as Doyle wrote him. If you people could read you would know that Holmes doesn't have "pizz-azz" and, in fact, isn't actually very likeable," writes Shadows_Girl on the Archive.org site.  


Doyle fans are pretty much in agreement that the series of films starring Wontner that Cutts initiated are some of the best examples of Holmes on film (I tend to agree, but now Jeremy Brett and the new BBC series are my current Holmes favorites--sorry, not a fan of the Downey Holmes).

"Film and radio interpretations have clearly confused a good many people but if you want to see the Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle's stories----these are the films you watch."--Shadows__Girl (archive.org)



Final note:  I noticed that the BFI lists Woman to Woman as a lost film, but not The White Shadow.  The archivist in charge of the Hitchcock material is out of the office until Aug. 15th.  While doing research on Hitchcock's Notebooks, I recall watching two Graham Cutt's films--one was most certainly The Blackguard.  The other was, I thought, a reel from The White Shadow.  I'll update when I learn more.