The White Shadow (film)

• Betty Compson: Nancy Brent / Brent Georgina
• Clive Brook: Robin Field
• Henry Victor: Louis Chadwick
• A. B. Imeson: Mr. Brent

The White Shadow ( release title in the United States: White Shadows ) is a British film from 1924 The based on Michael Morton's novel Children of Chance silent film is considered the oldest at least partially preserved film in which Alfred Hitchcock had cooperated.. He assisted director Graham Cutts here as an assistant director, screenwriter, editor and art director.

Content

As the consideration received, about 30 minutes long fragments of the film were only rediscovered in 2011, yet little is known to action. It tells the story of two twin sisters, one of which is evil and the other is good.

Production and publication

The White Shadow was the second of five films in which Hitchcock Cutts had assisted in various capacities. Filming concluded in the summer of 1923, seamlessly to the making of the film woman against woman on for whom the producer Michael Balcon and Victor Saville had engaged the American movie star Betty Compson. As woman against woman The White Shadow is based on a template by Michael Morton, the British actor Clive Brook acted again Compsons page.

After wife had turned against woman as a great popular success, The White Shadow was advertised with the promise: "The same star, producer, writer, hero, Cinematographer, Production Designer, rod, that same studio and the same rental as against woman for woman." But the film could not repeat the box office results from wife to wife, and proved to be a financial flop. Contemporary film critic complained at the premiere in February 1924, in particular the weakness of the story, even if the performances of Betty Compson and Clive Brooks excellent and the staging were clever critic of The Times 's view.

In particular, the failure of The White Shadow helped that in 1924 the production contract between the film distributors and financed CM Woolf and Balcon, Freedman & Saville was dissolved. Michael Balcon then founded the film production company Gainsborough Pictures, in the last two collaborations between Cutts and Hitchcock and Hitchcock's debut as a director works have been published.

Rediscovery of the film

As woman against woman was The White Shadow as one of lost film. In August 2011 the New Zealand Film Archive announced that the first three reels of the film were discovered in the inventory of the film archive. They belonged to a number of as yet unidentified American nitrate films that came from the collection of the late 1989 New Zealand projectionist Jack Murtagh. Even if the film had originally comprised six roles, could give a good idea of ​​the structure and content of the film according to the National Society of Film Critics rediscovered part.

The rollers are found are preserved and restored by Park Road Post Production in New Zealand. From the new film master copies should be created for the five American film institutions that are involved in the examination and preservation of the New Zealand Film Archive. Another copy should go to the British Film Institute, which had launched its own program to rescue the early films of Hitchcock. In the fall of 2013, a DVD release by the National Film Preservation Foundation was announced.

The fragments of The White Shadow are considered the oldest surviving film footage in which Alfred Hitchcock had worked.