“My lowest ebb”: Why ‘Waltzes From Vienna’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s least favourite movie
Alfred Hitchcock was a fundamental figure during the early years of British cinema, emerging during the 1920s and working his way up from assistant roles to directing. It didn’t take long until Hitchcock became a leading name in the industry, subsequently taking him to Hollywood, where he became one of the most iconic filmmakers of all time.
His love of cinema began at a young age, with the teenage Hitchcock often spending his spare time consuming moving pictures. From early cinema of attraction films to movies by the likes of DW Griffith and Cecil B DeMille, Hitchcock studied the components of filmmaking, preparing for a career of visual storytelling. The director didn’t stick to convention, though, and he soon pioneered his own techniques, becoming known as ‘The Master of Suspense’.
His first finished feature was The Pleasure Garden, released in 1925, a film that was described by a reviewer for The Film Daily as “essentially a sex exhibit,” with the writer suggesting that it “should be positively barred from juvenile audiences.” At the bottom of the review are the words “Director – Alfred J. Hitchcock; totally lacking in good judgment.”
Evidently, Hitchcock’s first attempt at filmmaking failed to garner him the kind of positive reviews he would go on to frequently receive, but he continued creating movies regardless, making what is believed to be Britain’s first sound film, Blackmail, a few years later. His place in the industry began to rise, and over the course of the next few decades, Hitchcock would make movies that changed cinema forever, from Rear Window to Vertigo to Psycho.
However, during his career, he released movies he disliked. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the movie that he came to hate the most was a musical – a genre far removed from what we typically associate the master of tension and thrillers with. Released in 1934, Waltzes From Vienna was described by Hitchcock as “my lowest ebb.” He added, “A musical, and they really couldn’t afford the music.”
The movie was an operetta film, with Esmond Knight playing Johann Strauss as he wrote ‘The Blue Danube’. Hitchcock only took on the movie because it was a job – it wasn’t an original idea of his or something he was particularly interested in. As a result, the passion just isn’t there, and you can tell that the filmmaker wasn’t truly at ease working on the musical.
He revealed, “You know, they say a man is no better than his last picture. But, ironically enough, prior to making Waltzes from Vienna and reaching this low ebb, I had written The Man Who Knew Too Much with a couple of other writers. But it was on the shelf. When I made The Man Who Knew Too Much, it was acclaimed, and it looked as though I had recovered. But the irony was that it was made, in my mind, anyway, before Waltzes from Vienna.”
The Man Who Knew Too Much was released a few months later, and indeed, it received much more positive attention. It starred Peter Lorre in an early English-language role, and remains one of Hitchcock’s most successful movies from the era in which sound film had established itself as the dominant mode of cinema. While he might have written it before Waltzes From Vienna, all that really matters is that it was released after, allowing Hitchcock to demonstrate that his filmmaking talents were only getting better and better.
