Lost Hitchcock Film Found In New Zealand

The New Zealand Film Archive recently discovered in its possession the first 30 minutes of The White Shadow, which is believed to be the earliest work in which Alfred Hitchcock received a film credit.  In this case he actually received four, billed as writer, assistant director, editor and production designer, all at the age of 24.

Seems that the New Zealand Film Archive has had a number of highly unstable nitrate prints in storage for years, but they only had the budget to restore domestic films.  Fortunately for the rest of the world, they were careful to maintain the foreign prints to prevent further degradation.  A recent trip from the National Film Preservation Foundation unearthed the Hitchcock film as well as an old Keystone Cops short.

My favorite part of the story?  Accounts that The White Shadow's actual director was "hack" and couldn't handle working with the younger and clearly more talented Hitchcock.

Check out the LA Times for more details.