The Mountain Eagle (1926)

director	Alfred Hitchcock
producers	Michael Balcon
writers	Eliot Stannard & Max Ferner
story by	Charles Lapworth
starring	Nita Naldi
	Bernhard Goetzke
	Malcolm Keen
cinematographer	Gaetano di Ventimiglia
running time	57 minutes
colour	black & white
sound mix	silent with English intertitles
aspect ratio	1.33:1
studio	Gainsborough Pictures & Emelka
distributor	Wardour Films (UK)
availability	none

Synopsis

Pettigrew, a shop-keeper in a mountain town of Kentucky, falls in love with the teacher, Beatrice. The girl doesn't consider him as a lover, so he gets angry and accuses her of molesting his son Edward who has a mental illness. The girl marries the hermit, Fear O'God Fulton in order to calm the people's anger and day by day she falls in love with her husband and a child is born. Pettigrew hides Edward and charges the hermit with his son's murder. Fear O'God is imprisoned but he escapes and takes refuge in the mountain with his wife and son.

Production

Pre-Production

Charles Lapworth, Gainsborough's editorial director, had developed an original story titled "Fear o' God", which was announced in the trade press as the second joint Gainsborough-Emelka production.

Screenplay

Eliot Stannard started developing the scenario from Lapworth's story during the autumn of 1925 and it was completed shortly after Hitchcock returned to Munich to begin filming.

Casting

The international cast included British actor Malcolm Keen, American "vamp" actress Nita Naldi, here cast against-type as the Kentucky schoolteacher, and German actor Bernhard Goetzke who Hitchcock had befriended during the filming of Die Prinzessin und der Geiger.

Principal Photography

The primary source of information about the film's production comes from Hitchcock's own 1937 article "Life among the Stars":

The star I had for the second film I directed was a very considerable star in her day. Her name was Nita Naldi: you probably remember her with Valentino in "Blood and Sand". But she came across the Atlantic to make one picture in Germany for £1,500.

When I read the script I found it was set in the Kentucky hills. My heroine was a pleasant, simple, homely schoolmarm. My star was glamorous, dark, Latin, Junoesque, statuesque, slinky, with slanting eyes, four-inch heels, nails like a mandarin's, and a black dog to match her black, swathed dress.

We got to a place called Umhaus ... we made all our arrangements. We went to bed. And the next morning the village was under snow. There was only one thing to do: produce a thaw.

I got hold of four men who formed the local fire brigade. I convinced them that they must get out the fire engine and wash the snow away. They argued, finally they agreed. They pulled out the great manual pump with its leaky hose and they turned it on the village.

We washed the snow from the houses, from the roofs, from the trees, from the ground ... and on that small area of land, washed clean of snow with a fire engine, our exteriors were made.

I went back to Munich to meet my star. As she stepped off the train Munich quite audibly gasped. They had never seen anything like her before. She travelled with her father, who looked like Earl Haig. Her Louis SIV heels clicked down the platform. The dog on its leash was long and gleaming with brushing. Her maid followed her. It was like the royalty Germany hadn't seen for five years.

But I was thinking of a simple Kentucky Miss in a gingham gown and a cotton apron. I had to produce a strong woman of the mid-western mountains who handled a gun instead of a lipstick.

First we quarrelled about her nails. They came down from half an inch beyond the finger to a quarter. We had another discussion. They came down to an eighth. Another discussion and they were all right. The heels came down layer by layer. The makeup was altered shade by shade. The hair was changed curl by curl.

I shall never forget one afternoon. We had been working hard all the day, and Nita was nearly all in. She had to play one more scene, where she was cleaning Malcolm Keen's rifle when a face appeared at the window and she pointed the gun at him.

The scene was going well when, just as she turned the gun to the window, I saw it waver. It veered from side to side. It moved up and down. It went round in circles. Then, without a word, Nita tilted to one side and fell headlong.

The floor was very hard. The set was built on a foundation of stones set in cement. Before the camera had even stopped turning, she had recovered. She got to her feet and wanted to go on playing, but we called it a day.

A few weeks later, when Alma and I were married, we went to Paris for our honeymoon and spent the first day of it with Nita. But that is another story — and one I'm not going to tell.

Filming dragged on over Christmas 1925 and was completed in January 1926.

On the boat crossing back to England, Alfred Hitchcock proposed to Alma Reville during a storm. Bedridden with seasickness, Alma recalled "I was too ill to lift my head, but not so ill that I couldn't make an affirmative gesture."

Release & Reception

According to J.L. Kuhns' authoritative essay on the film, published in the Hitchcock Annual, the film was screened in Berlin in May 1926, then shown to the British press in October 1926 before being scheduled for public release in May 1927.

In his essay, "German Hitchcock", Joseph Garncarz summarises the film's reception in German:

Hitchcock's films were unpopular in with German audiences because they were "too English" in their mentality and casting. Most German film critics, however, highly valued Hitchcock's films, because they judged them as being artistically interesting and stylistically influenced by the German art film tradition. What all German film critics strongly disliked, by contrast, was the use of intertitles, which clearly opposed the aspirations of German art cinema.

Speaking to Francois Truffaut about the film, Hitchcock simply said that "it was a very bad movie".

Preservation Status

No known prints of the film have survived.

See Also...

For further relevant information about this film, see also...

• Articles about The Mountain Eagle (1926)
• Complete Cast and Crew
• Web links to information, articles, reviews, etc

DVD Releases

none

Image Gallery

Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...

Cast and Crew

Directed by:

• Alfred Hitchcock
• Alma Reville - assistant director

Starring:

• Nita Naldi - Beatrice
• Malcolm Keen - John "Fear o' God" Fulton
• John F Hamilton - Edward Pettigrew
• Bernhard Goetzke - Mr Pettigrew
• Ferdinand Martini

Produced by:

• Michael Balcon

Written by:

• Eliot Stannard
• Max Ferner
• Charles Lapworth - story

Photographed by:

• Gaetano di Ventimiglia

Art Direction by:

• Ludwig Reiber
• Willy Reiber