‘The War of the Worlds’: the 1953 classic that was almost Alfred Hitchcock’s only sci-fi movie
Alfred Hitchcock made many films that never materialised over the course of his career. It’s something that happens to most filmmakers; a good idea might form, a good idea might actually make it into production, but then, for some reason or another, it falls through the cracks and disappears into the ether.
The iconic English director has a rather huge list of projects that he didn’t direct in the end, from a modernised version of Hamlet to Phone Booth, which would eventually get made in 2002, with Joel Schumacher directing. It was quite the switch-up.
There are so many reasons why a movie might not get made. It could be logistical issues, financial problems, or a change of heart that leads a director to drop out of a project, and in some cases, a different director will take it on. Sometimes nothing happens at all, and the idea remains a great ‘what if?’.
One project less talked about of Hitchcock’s unrealised movies, though, is an adaptation that he was only rumoured to have been attached to. It doesn’t seem like Hitchcock got very far with the potential film, but it might’ve been for the best, because in the hands of director Byron Haskin, it became one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. Of course, I’m talking about The War of the Worlds.
Hitch was the unanimous champion of suspense and thrillers, but he never made a science fiction film. He got close to it with various horror movies, like The Birds, but sci-fi boomed during the 1950s when he was much more focused on making a string of thrillers like Dial M for Murder and Rear Window.
The director was willing to give the genre a go, though, and he reportedly expressed interest in HG Wells’ iconic, pioneering story as far back as the 1930s. Hitchcock was still finding his feet as a filmmaker back then, and perhaps he thought sci-fi could be his calling?
It wasn’t meant to be, though, and it’s likely the fact that the sci-fi genre just wasn’t all that popular at the time that prevented the adaptation from actually going ahead. And besides, was Hitchcock even right for the job? During the same decade, Battleship Potemkin filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, a legendary pioneer of montage, was supposedly asked if he wanted to direct the film by Paramount. Now, that’s something that’s equally as hard to imagine.
Wells’ novel was eventually brought to the big screen in 1953 with Haskin directing and George Pal producing, who’d also go on to helm an adaptation of Wells’ The Time Machine a few years later. The War of the Worlds reflected a monumental progression for special effects in Hollywood, leaving a lasting legacy on both the sci-fi genre and cinema as a whole.
Imagining the movie in Hitchcock’s hands is hard, because sci-fi just isn’t a genre that the filmmaker ever touched, but considering that he was such a masterful director, it’s likely he would’ve done a pretty good job of it.
