The deleted scene that left Alfred Hitchcock fuming: “That was the essence of the film!”
It’s hard to imagine what cinema would look like today without the influence of the mighty Alfred Hitchcock. With his obsessive attention to detail (although at times he was certainly a little too obsessive) and his expert grasp on the vital ingredients needed to create an atmosphere of tension and suspense, he consistently delivered films that broke down the very essence of cinematic convention, paving the way for the future of the thriller and horror genres.
Hitchcock was incredibly passionate about filmmaking, having discovered a love for cinema when he was just a young boy. In fact, cinema was becoming an increasingly popular art form as he came of age in the silent era, and he watched the medium unravel around him, enamoured by the potential of moving images to create an indelible impact on the viewer and shape their perspective on the world.
The budding director got his start several years before cinema even had sound, making his first finished feature film in 1925, the romantic drama The Pleasure Garden. Surprisingly, it didn’t fare super well, and neither did his next film, The Mountain Eagle, which is now considered lost. Poor Hitchcock might’ve been down on his luck at the beginning of his career, but his next film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, showed much more promise.
After making England’s first talkie (Blackmail), Hitchcock became an unbeatable filmmaker, rising fast with a succession of acclaimed films throughout the 1930s, like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, and Secret Agent. Yet, in spite of these successes, Hitchcock still found himself grappling with studio executives trying to take control of his work, and in one instance, one of his movies was released in America without a certain scene – even though he thought it was a vital part of the story.
Young and Innocent, released in 1937, found itself titled with the much less snappy The Girl Was Young when it hit theatres across the pond, with Hitchcock telling François Truffaut, “It was an attempt to do a chase story with very young people involved. The point of view is that of a young girl who is bewildered when she becomes involved in murder with the police and all the rest. One of the many ways in which we used youth in this picture was to build up a suspense episode around a children’s party.
“Here again, the younger hero is accused of a crime he hasn’t committed. He’s on the run and hiding and the girl is helping him, rather reluctantly. She tells him that she’s promised to call on her aunt and takes him to the aunt’s house, where a children’s party is taking place. The kids are playing blindman’s buff. The young man and his girl try to get away while auntie is blind man, because if either one of them is caught, they will have to stay.”
If Hitchcock went to all that trouble of shooting a tense scene, surely the producers would understand the importance of it being kept in? Yet, in the US cut, it was nowhere to be seen. Hitchcock added, “So there’s lots of suspense. Auntie nearly catches them, but they manage to get away. When the film was released in this country, that was one scene they cut out. It was absurd; that was the essence of the film!”
