Production
This is the only feature film directed by Hitchcock that is considered a lost film, which means that no prints of the film are known to exist. In 2012, a set of 24 still photographs were found in an archive of one of Hitchcock's close friends. Although these images gave clues to the film and its story, they were taken on the set rather than stills from the film itself.
Hitchcock himself considered it a mundane melodrama best forgotten, though fans naturally remain curious. In François Truffaut's book Hitchcock/Truffaut (ISBN 2-07-073574-5) Alfred Hitchcock himself described the film as "awful" and said he was "not sorry there are no known prints". Film historian J. Lary Kuhns, however, states in the book Hitchcock's Notebooks (ISBN 0-380-79945-6) by Dan Auiler that one contemporary writer called The Mountain Eagle far superior to The Lodger.
Exteriors were filmed in Obergurgl, Austria. The Austrian Tyrol stood in for the mountains and hollows of Kentucky. Bad weather during the shooting was a constant source of trouble.
Although it was Hitchcock's second completed film, due to the runaway success of The Lodger, it was released three months after it.
Several surviving stills are reproduced in François Truffaut's book. More stills have recently been found to exist, many of which are reproduced in Dan Auiler's book. A lobby card (illustrated above right) for the film was found at a flea market in Rowley, Massachusetts. It was found in a box of broken frames and was being used as backing for the picture of another dog. The dog's significance in the film remains a mystery. It may have been used to assist Edward in fleeing the village or to help film's hero, John Fulton, during his escape from prison or return to the village seeking a doctor.
Although the film was reportedly released in the United States as Fear o' God, the title on the surviving U.S. lobby card seems to contradict this. Film historian J. Larry Kuhns claims the film was never released under that title.
Read more about this topic: The Mountain Eagle
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)