2. The Mountain Eagle (1926)

Hitchcock's second directorial effort, The Mountain Eagle (a British-German production) unfortunately is lost to the ravages of time. According to the Library of Congress, approximately 75% of silent films are lost forever from across the globe. The reasons for this are numerous. The main one would be that nitrate film stock used for 35mm prints was highly flammable and could spontaneously combust (a vault fire in 1935 at Fox studios destroyed practically everything in stock and a fire at MGM's vault in 1967 destroyed many silent and early talkies). The market value of many silents for reissuing diminished once sound came into the picture and many studios junked films they felt had no value. Adding to this would that the silver in the nitrate stock could be extracted so that the studios would get some salvage value from the discarded films.

While we can't exactly say why The Mountain Eagle is missing, it is known that it had only a screening for the press in 1926 and was only issued in theaters once Hitchcock's next film, The Lodger was a hit. (Hitchcock's previous film The Pleasure Garden also got the same reissue). Along with his previous film, The Mountain Eagle featured an international cast with American Nita Naldi (best known from 1923's The Ten Commandments), Brit Malcolm Keene (who would later work with Hitchcock in The Lodger and The Manxman) and German Bernard Goetzke. Despite that appeal, the film was a commercial failure and only had a small release.

The plot (according to contemporary reviews) concerns Beatrice (Naldi) who is courted but later shunned by the Justice of the Peace Pettigrew (Goetzke) and is later forced from the town when he accuses her of romancing his disabled son. She is rescued by the recluse "Fear o' God" (Keene) who Beatrice falls for. When Pettigrew's son disappears, the villain accuses "Fear o' God" of the abduction and sentences him to a year in jail despite no evidence. When the mountain man escapes, he sets off to find a doctor to care for his newborn son, but has a showdown with Pettigrew.

A critic for Bioscope praised Hitchcock's direction, as did another from Kinematograph Weekly, but both faulted the script as being to unimaginative and unrealistic. Hitchcock later told director Francois Truffaut that the film was terrible and wasn't sorry for its loss. Approximately 30 stills from the movie have been found along with a lobby card, but no assessment can accurately be given until the film is found.

(The synopsis was taken from Paul Duncan's book Alfred Hitchock. The Complete Films which can be purchased here)