The Search For Alfred Hitchcock’s Missing Movie Is On
Way back in 1928, legendary director Alfred Hitchcock made a silent film called The Mountain Eagle. Hitch didn’t much care for the flick, and years later it disappeared. Now, the BFI (British Film Institute) has launched a campaign to recover Eagle and other lost works to add to its ever-growing archive of 180,000 movies.
I’ll watch anything helmed by Hitchcock, even if it’s a piece of crap, as he described. Then again, how bad can it really be? I’d be willing to wager the early films of someone as talented as Hitch are ten times better than say, I dunno, Killers or The Last Airbender.
Much to my chagrin, there’s no reward for finding The Mountain Eagle. If there was, I’d be busting into attics and basements like nobody’s business. Of course if I were lucky enough to get my grubby little mitts on it, there’s no way I’d hand it over to the BFI. Instead, I’d grab my trusty Bolex and shoot ten minutes of a bird flying over a mountain, scribble “The Mountain Eagle” on the film can, and turn that over to the Brits. Hitch said it was awful, so no one would be the wiser.
One of the only sources for Hitch not liking the ‘Mountain Eagle’ was his book with Truffaut; in that book he said he didn’t like a number of his films–and yet recanted later, or once interest was regenerated in them we can see his initial comments were off the cuff and not very considered (who knew anyone would care for “The Farmer’s Wife” in 1965?). I am sure The Mountain Eagle will be as interesting as any of Hitch’s silents, such as “Champagne,” “Easy Virtue,” or “The Ring.” If one insists on comparing them to “Psycho” – that’s something different. But definitely it wouldn’t be crap.