Long before Alfred Hitchcock became a household name associated with classics like “Psycho” and “Dial M for Murder,” he began his filmmaking career in the U.K.
But even before releasing 1930s British films like “The 39 Steps” that many people associate him with, he was working in silent film. For both Ben Roberts, the British Film Institute’s chief executive, and Arike Oke, the executive director of knowledge, learning and collections, there’s continued value in drawing a line back to his silent films made between 1925 and 1929.
“There are things in those films that you can see echoes of in his later work, where he becomes a known filmmaker,” Oke tells Variety. “You also see him start to experiment with shot styles and storytelling, with some of the mystery and murder kind of elements and the melodrama.”
Hitchcock’s 1925 directorial debut, the British-German “The Pleasure Gardener,” is just one of nine surviving Hitchcock silent films on which the BFI completed a major restoration effort in 2012. Other films from this era include “The Lodger” in 1927, which featured a Jack the Ripper-style murderer, and “Champagne” in 1928, notable for its experimental opening shot that goes through a champagne glass and into a building.
However, one such film has yet to be found: 1926’s “The Mountain Eagle,” which would have been Hitchcock’s second film. The only surviving image is not an actual still, but a photo on set of Hitchcock directing the film, which Oke sees as extra “poignant.”
The BFI has their own version of FBI’s most wanted list, and “The Mountain Eagle” often gets cited as the most sought-after lost film print in the world. When Roberts moderated a panel at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival with “The Shape of Water” director Guillermo del Toro, they gave a shout-out to “The Mountain Eagle” and mentioned Portugal and Spain as possible locations to look into.
Getty Images for TCM
“You just never know where someone might turn it up. I think we might be beyond our research capabilities at this point,” Roberts admits. So for now, it’s presumed lost, but perhaps not for good.
There are many different ways a film can be lost and found. In 2015, the BFI managed to find a lost print of the 1928 Disney cartoon “Sleigh Bells” featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit — but that film had been catalogued. The BFI team just didn’t realize it was considered lost to Disney.
“We have a lot of Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM titles, but we don’t necessarily know what they don’t have. So that’s quite a funny example because discovery was a matter of serendipity,” Oke says. “Maybe that will be the case with ‘The Mountain Eagle,’ eventually. Maybe someone has catalogued it under a different name, or they don’t know what they’ve got.”
For the films that BFI does have their hands on, with a national archive featuring millions of film and TV programs, the work that goes into archiving is quite research-intensive. It involves pulling all the original, negative and positive elements together, collaborating heavily with organizations like the Film Foundation and repairing, restoring and digitizing the work.
Adam Bronkhorst
The recent Hitchcock restoration project, Roberts explains, is a testament to BFI’s active efforts. “Work doesn’t just sit on a shelf. You can bring it back to life for people so that, as Arike says, you can really start to see where the phrase Hitchcockian comes from.”
Del Toro also emphasized the importance of looking back at prolific filmmakers’ early work during his TCM Festival conversation with Roberts. “I do believe that up until his last decade, every single tool in Hitchcock’s toolbox was forged in the English period. Every single of them,” Del Toro said. He cited Hitchcock’s “English literature” approach to horror and crime and interest in German expressionism.
When restoring projects that go back as far as 100 years, the key is to find references from the time period, like the common speed of footage and frame rate. This can prove challenging since silent prints often don’t come with records of necessary documentation, like the original runtime. And available prints may not feature tinting and toning, early black-and-white color processes, which then prompts BFI to look across the world for examples.
“We’re not, in any way, trying to create new work,” Oke says. “We’re not trying to re-edit Hitchcock or improve it. We’re trying to restore it to its original viewing experience for audiences.”
At this year’s BFI Film on Film Festival, the organization aims to give viewers that kind of throwback viewing experience with a transfer Technicolor print of the original “Star Wars” opening the festival on June 12. That print of the film wasn’t rare back in 1977, but it’s become “incredibly precious” now, Oke says. And at the TCM Festival, BFI presented a rare nitrate print of “Mildred Pierce” and new 35mm prints of “To Be or Not To Be” and “The Private Life of Henry VIII.”
In a digital era where film preservation and history is continually undervalued and underfunded, Roberts continues to stress the many connections between classic and contemporary film. Most recently, Tom Cruise himself drew that bridge while accepting a BFI fellowship ahead of the release of “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
“He talked a lot about how his education for performance came from early silent films. Many silent film performers inspired him to be the kind of cinematic performer that he is,” Roberts explains. “It speaks to the importance of putting films from across the century plus [out there].”
As BFI continues prepping for the Film on Film festival and looks ahead, the organization’s archival efforts aren’t just focused on classic film. One project focused on the future is BFI’s screen heritage, which collects digitally native content, including moving image and audio-visual formats.
“We work with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to preserve curated selections of their U.K. TV content,” Oke says. “And if we didn’t do that, then I think when people look back at 2025 in even as short as 50 years, they’re not really going to see much of our film culture survive. We’re archiving in the age of super abundance.”
