The Mountain Eagle 1926

Following the release of ‘The Pleasure Garden’, studio boss Michael Balcon dispatched Hitchcock again to Munich to make ‘The Mountain Eagle’, another melodrama, based on a story by Charles Lapworth called, ’Fear O’ God’.

An elaborate village was built at the Orbis Studios in Munich, and the exteriors were shot in Obergurgl and Umhaus in the Tyrol close to the Italian border.

His cast was again a mixture of nationalities: the American actress Nita Naldi; British actor Malcolm Keen and German actor Bernhard Goetzke. For Balcon, this multi-national cast, would help ensure its success in the English, American and German markets. Hitchcock’s cameraman was again Baron ventimiglia and as in ‘The Pleasure Garden’, the scenarist was Eliot Stannard.

The story is set in Kentucky in the USA and concerns a young woman who is accused of immorality and is hounded out of town by the local Justice of the Peace played by Bernhard Goetzke. The school teacher is given shelter in the hills by a recluse who is known as Fear O’God, played by Malcolm Keane. After a while, the couple return to the village to be married, but are accused of the murder of the Justice of the Peace’s son. Fear O’God is put in gaol where he is left to rot. His innocence is only proved when the son returns.

The film was hardly noticed when it was released and there is doubt by some as to whether it was released at all in Great Britain. “A very bad movie,” is how Hitchcock referred to it in an interview with the French director Francois Truffaut. Whether that is an accurate assessment we will perhaps never know for the negative and all prints have disappeared. All that remains are a few production stills which I have put together in the clip below. Who knows, perhaps one day a copy may turn up in some warehouse or attic in Germany, Great Britain or America. Now what a find that would be!

The Pleasure Garden 1925

Hitchcock’s debut as a fully fledged director is an interesting one. The famous English producer and studio boss Michael Balcon (who gave the cinema public those marvellous Ealing comedies and dramas of the 1940s and 1950s) was responsible for giving him his first chance to direct this melodrama set in London, Lake Como and the tropics. The film has an international cast of American, English and German actors and technicians, with also Hitchcock’s future wife, Alma Reville, as his assistant director and editor. She would have an involvement, credited and un-credited, in all of Hitchcock’s films. The film was made in Germany in a co-production that Balcon had set up with Erich Pommer of Emelka Studios (now known as Bavaria Films) in Munich.

A catalogue of disasters almost prevented the film from being made. These included: confiscation of ten thousand feet of film along with a fine by customs officials at the Italian border; luxurious accommodations demanded by the two leading ladies; money stolen from Hitchcock’s hotel room and the breakage of a train window at Zurich railway station. In fact in order to prevent the shutting down of the picture completely Hitchcock had to borrow money from his actors.



The film opens at The Pleasure Gardens Theatre with a shot of peroxide blonde chorus girls descending a spiral staircase. Hitchcock has his cameraman, Baron Ventimiglia (who would shoot another two more films for Hitchcock: The Mountain Eagle and The Lodger) track a row of rich elderly men ogling a line of leggy chorines. Here we’re introduced to Patsy Brand, played by American actress Virginia Valli, who is the object of the amorous gaze of one of the old men on the front row. In this opening sequence we see for the first time an idea of two themes that would occur in a number of Hitchcock’s later films: voyeurism and blondes.

In the next sequence we’re introduced to the other leading lady in the film: Jill Cheyne, played by American actress Carmelita Geraghty, who is hoping to find work at The Pleasure Gardens. She has a letter of introduction to the owner, Oscar Hamilton, played by German actor George Snell. Unfortunately this, along with her money, is stolen by a couple of thieves loitering outside the theatre. Penniless and with little hope of a job, she is about to leave when she is spotted by Patsy who, feeling sorry for her, takes her back to her lodgings.

Back at Patsy’s lodgings the two get ready for bed. Sex was always to feature in Hitchcock’s films and here he clearly takes delight in titillating the audience as the two girls throw off clothes and get into their bed attire. It’s tempting to think of this as Hitchcock hinting at a possible lesbian liaison in the mind of Patsy; all the more so when one reads the account by both McGilligan and Spoto of Hitchcock watching a pair of lesbians making love in a Berlin brothel which he and Alma Reville seem to have stumbled into. However, if there is any such notion in the mind of Patsy it quickly goes when she sees Jill kneeling piously at the side of her bed saying her prayers and Cuddles, Patsy’s dog, licking her feet. All of Hitchcock’s films have touches of wit and humour and I feel sure there was a mischievous smile on his face when he shot this scene: there was on mine.

The following day Patsy takes Jill to The Pleasure Gardens for an audition. With some persuasion, Jill manages to get the owner to let her have a chance. She impresses with a Charleston dance routine and gets a job for £20 a week. This is the start of Jill’s rise to success which will eventually go to her head.

In the scene that follows, Hitchcock introduces us to the two male leads: Levett (Miles Mander) who is the friend of Hugh Fielding (John Stuart) and is Jill’s fiancée. Both men work in the colonies on plantations. Here, Hitchcock uses Patsy’s dog Cuddles to give us an idea of their respective characters: Hugh fusses over the dog whilst Levett is indifferent. Hugh is obviously the good guy whereas Levett is the one we shouldn’t trust. Mander and Stuart are well cast; Hitchcock must have been satisfied with their performances because he cast them both again each in two more films: Mander went on to appear in ‘Murder’ (1930) and ‘Mary’ (1931) whilst Stuart appeared in ‘Elstree’ (1930) and ‘Number Seventeen’ (1932). In this scene Hugh confides to Patsy that he worries about losing Jill. He is quite right to for shortly afterwards Jill moves out of Patsy’s lodgings and begins a relationship with, what Patsy calls, a ‘phoney prince’. Patsy begins to see more of Levett, and falls in love with him even though we see that for him this is nothing more than a fling before he returns to the tropics.

By now Jill is leading the life of the rich and famous and has cut herself off from her friends, even going to the extent of refusing to loan Patsy money so that she can get married. We see her trying on expensive clothes with an attentive and clearly effeminate designer assisting. Homosexuality (never explicitly of course) was a theme that would recur in several later films, most notably in ‘Rope’.

Now married, Patsy and Levett go on honeymoon to Lake Como in Italy. Hitchcock takes the camera out of the studio into real locations for added realism. The audiences at the time I’m sure must have delighted in this kind of travelogue scene.

Whilst there she begins to get some idea of what he is really like: he refers to some harmless local children as ‘brats’ and throws away a rose given to him by her which she attaches sentimental value. Hitchcock in his later pictures was a master of cinematographic technique and at this point in the film we get a hint of things to come in the way he uses a clever transition device as the two newly weds part company at the end of their honeymoon. He goes off to the tropics and she returns to London. Here we see a close-up of Patsy’s hands waving goodbye and then Levett doing the same. The picture then dissolves so that we see a close up of his native girl’s hands waving at Levett greeting him as he arrives at the port near the plantation. It’s probably something of a cliché now but back in 1925 would have appeared quite novel and stylish in a British picture.

From this point onwards the film takes on a dark tone. Levett, having little thought for Patsy back in London, falls into a dissolute lifestyle with the native girl who attends to his every need. Time passes and eventually Patsy hears from him. She receives a letter in which he lies telling her that he has not written because he is ill and that the tropics is no place for a woman. Genuinely worried she borrows money from her landlady and landlord to buy a ticket to go to the plantation and nurse him back to health. On arriving she surprises him by catching him in flagrante with the native girl. Disgusted she calls him ‘a filthy animal’ and insists on leaving. A struggle ensues, but she is rescued by a friend of Hugh’s who tells her Hugh has the fever and needs care. The native girl who I should mention here is played by Nita Naldi, who had another role in a Hitchcock film the following year: The Mountain Eagle, which is considered lost. The girl rushes out and into the sea closely followed by Levett. She thinks that he wants her back and turns with a look of hope on her face. But Levett has other ideas: he grabs hold of her and pushes her under the water till she dies. Though cinematically he doesn’t make a great deal of it, unlike in years to come, it’s noteworthy as it’s his first screen murder. However brief as it is it is well photographed and edited indeed Hitchcock has the camera go under water at one stage.



Levett then goes in search of Patsy who he finds in the arms of Hugh. She realises that she made a mistake in marrying Levett and that all along she really loved Hugh. Levett threatens Patsy and reluctantly she returns to him. However he is beset with guilt about his murder of the girl and is haunted by the ghost of her. He sees her about the house and takes a sword to the ghost and then tries to kill Patsy with it. Just in time, along comes Hugh’s friend who, seeing that Patsy is in danger, shoots Levett dead.

Needless to say Patsy and Hugh realise that they were meant for each other all along. We then see them back at Patsy’s flat in London. Cuddles the dog is clearly also happy with the situation. He knew all along!
I enjoyed the film, though clearly it isn’t what we would now recognise as a Hitchcock picture. However there is certainly evidence of his humour and the beginnings of his considerable cinematic technique.

All the performances in the film are good: Miles Mander in particular looks positively villainous at times. However early on I did have some problems distinguishing between the two leading ladies, but this could have been as much to do with the quality of the print that I was watching as anything. Also worth mentioning I think is that Hitchcock doesn’t use too many inter-titles, instead he manages to get from his actors expressions that make clear their characters thoughts and intentions. Whilst working in Germany Hitchcock observed the great German director Murnau making ‘Der Letzte Mann’ also known as ‘The Last Laugh’, a film which has a reputation for its lack of titles, being what Hitchcock regarded as ‘pure film’ which he always aspired to in his movie making career.


DVD Details

The DVD that I viewed is from a 10 disc box set called ‘Hitchcock: The British Years’ and is published by Network. The print itself, according to the main title credits, is from the Rohauer Collection and was restored in 1981, a fact that I found hard to believe was true.

Picture: Black & White with tinted sequences

Screen Ratio: 1:33

Sound: Silent with organ accompaniment

Region: 2

Running time: 60 minutes approximately

Extras: Introduction to The Pleasure garden by Charles Barr; two interviews with Hitchcock (1968/69) where he talks about his pre war work. These interviews were filmed for Granada television’s ‘Cinema’ programme. Though not named or seen, one of the interviewers sounds like Michael Parkinson; image gallery.


Next week: ‘The Mountain Eagle’ and ‘The Lodger

A Year of Hitchcock

Over the years I have seen every movie that Alfred Hitchcock directed. Well almost. The one that I haven’t seen is ‘The Mountain Eagle’, which is described as a lost film. I can’t say that I remember every one of those films: his films from the 1950s onwards have had a longer lasting impression on me (with notable exceptions such as ‘39 Steps’ and ‘The Lady Vanishes’) than his earlier ones, particularly from the silent period. It is for this reason that I have decided not only to reacquaint myself with those early films, but also to reappraise the rest of his oeuvre.

With the help of two books written by his biographers: Patrick McGilligan’s ‘Alfred Hitchcock: A life in Darkness and Light’ (published by Wiley 2003) and Donald Spoto’s ‘Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock’ (published by Plexus 1983), I plan, over the year, to write about each and every one of his films.

So, there you have it: fifty two weeks to watch and write about fifty three films! This week I’ll start with his first film: ‘The Pleasure Garden’, made in 1925.