Movies

First Hitchcock Film Discovered

Three reels of "The White Shadow" turn up.

Film scholars, rejoice! Archivists in New Zealand say they have discovered what they believe to be Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest surviving feature film. The three reels show the first half of 1924’s The White Shadow, on which the 24-year-old Hitchcock worked as an assistant director, art director, editor, and writer. It stars Betty Compton as a pair of twins, one good and one evil. The reels “offer a priceless opportunity to study [Hitchcock’s] visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape,” said one Hitchcock scholar. The film will be preserved in New Zealand, and a new print will be made so that the film can “re-premiere” in the U.S.