Alfred Hitchcock’s unmade final movie: “He seemed in no hurry to finish his work”
Alfred Hitchcock may be widely regarded as the greatest filmmaker of all time, but that doesn’t mean that he completely fulfilled his potential.
Any discussion about the greatest directors ever would be incomplete without serious consideration of the ‘Master of Suspense’, who’s such an influential figure in the industry that the term ‘Hitchcockian’ was coined to describe films that draw directly from his style.
Beyond the fact that Hitchcock has directed at least a dozen films that could rightfully be described as some of the best ever made, he had the rare advantage of witnessing changes within the medium as a result of his vast experience.
He began his career in his home country of England, where he made black-and-white films as early as the 1920s, and it was after his brilliant adaptation of the gothic romance novel Rebecca winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’ that Hitchcock began working more prominently in America, with classics like Rear Window, Vertigo, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, and Dial M For Murder all released within the 1950s. His breakthrough horror, Psycho, is still cited as having one of the scariest scenes in cinematic history.
As with every director, Hitchcock began to face more issues when it came to funding in the later stages of his career, where although he had acquired the rights to a thriller screenplay called The Short Night in the late ’60s, he began to work more actively on the project in the late ‘70s, after his 1976 dark comedy Family Plot earned rave reviews, suggesting he might have another comeback on his hands.
Based on a novel by Ronald Kirkbride, The Short Night follows a game of cat-and-mouse between rival spies working for different nations. After firing the film’s first screenwriter, Hitchcock began working with David Freeman to complete the story, who found that in his waning health, Hitchcock was ill-prepared to return to production.
“He moved in and out of senility and yet, for all that, he seemed in no hurry to finish his work, even though his life was clearly limited,” Freeman said. “The pleasure, and sometimes the problem, is letting his mind roam, then ever so gently tugging it back to the script.”
According to him, Hitchcock became so obsessive about the details of the script that the planning process was stalled, and while big names like Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, and Walter Matthau were all brought up as potential stars, at various points in production, but his failing health eventually led Universal Pictures to officially cancel The Family Plot in 1979, with the director passing the following year.
It’s understandable that Hitchcock would have wanted to end his career on a high note, as not every director can say they finished their career with a masterpiece; even if his career may have peaked with Psycho, there was still an expectation that his name would have been a considerable draw, justifying the expenses from Universal Pictures.
The Short Night in particular felt like a back-to-basics approach for him because it returned to the world of espionage and intrigue that he had captured so perfectly in Notorious and Foreign Correspondent, yet that was no guarantee of its quality, especially given the state that Hitchcock was in. However, looking at the number of masterpieces he is responsible for, it only makes sense that he would have a few unfinished classics as well.
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