The one film Alfred Hitchcock always regretted making: “It was a very bad movie”
The simplest way for a director to make everyone forget about their worst movies is to make several of the greatest of all time, which is obviously a lot easier said than done. Of course, Alfred Hitchcock accomplished that and then some, and he was even lent a fortunate assist to further erase his most egregious regret from the history books.
The soon-to-be ‘Master of Suspense’ was already an established, acclaimed, and well-known filmmaker in the United Kingdom long before he took his talents to Hollywood, and he effortlessly adapted to his new surroundings by steering 1940’s Rebecca to the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’.
As far as American debuts go, steering his first Stateside picture to the most prestigious accolade in the industry was about as impressive a way to do it as anyone could hope to manage, but it’s not as if Hitchcock was a novice or newcomer when he had over 20 British productions under to his name by then.
His later efforts on home soil, including The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Sabotage, and The Lady Vanishes, carried the hallmarks that would come to define his work. Slick, stylish, intense, and atmospheric thrillers that saw Hitchcock hold the audience in the palm of his hand, it was inevitable that he’d eventually outgrow the UK film scene and conquer America.
Not that he always had a track record of greatness, though, with one of his earliest efforts becoming a longtime bone of contention. 1926’s The Mountain Eagle was the director’s second completed film, with Hitchcock heading off to Germany to shoot a silent romantic drama about a schoolteacher who becomes the centre of a three-way tug-of-war for her affections.
“It was a very bad movie,” he told Francois Truffaut. “The producers were always trying to break into the American market, so they wanted another film star. And so, for the part of the village schoolmistress, they sent me Nita Taldi, the successor to Theda Bara. She had fingernails out to there. Ridiculous!”
The benefits of celluloid still being in its infancy when he shot The Mountain Eagle worked out pretty well for Hitchcock, all things considered. After trashing his sophomore directorial effort, which he also called “awful” in addition to branding it “a very bad movie,” he must have been thrilled when every known print vanished off the face of the planet.
In fact, it’s the only one of Hitchcock’s completed features that’s become a lost film, with only a couple of dozen still images having survived. Considering he actively despised The Mountain Eagle, its unique status as the sole picture helmed by the ‘Master of Suspense’ that disappeared into the ether of cinema history probably gave him a great deal of comfort: he didn’t want anyone to see it, and after its initial run in cinemas in 1927, they never would.
