The White Shadow (1924) - a Silent Film Review

Betty Compson

“Born without soul, the spirit of rebellion now dominates Nancy, while the great soul of Georgina grieves for her sister.”

Clive Brook and Betty Compson

But by today's standards, Nancy is not a soulless woman at all why she should be grieved. The only thing she wants is the freedom to be able to choose which men she socialises with and make her own decisions. But Nancy is in a 1924 film. At that time men had enough on their plate handeling those annoying suffragettes who wanted voting rights. So daughters had to be kept on a tight leash.

"The White Shadow" Filmposter

When writing my reviews, I always have one rule that I always follow; I must have seen the whole movie. With this film I deviate once from that rule. I am talking about the movie "The White Shadow" from 1924. Many Hitchcock enthusiasts will remember 3 August 2011; the day The New Zealand National Film Preservation Foundation reported that a lost Hitchcock film had been found. It concerned three film cans from "The White Shadow" that were mistakenly labeled "Twin Sisters" and "Unidentified American Film". Unfortunately, only three of the six reels had been found. I think that the New Zealand National Film Preservation Foundation's archive has been turned upside down to find the other three film cans, but they had no luck in finding them. The wrongly labeled film cans came from a donation from a protectionist and collector who had left his entire collection to the New Zealand Film Institute in 1989. The institute has now restored them and put new music under it and so we can still see the first 40 minutes of the film.

A.B. Imeson and Betty Compson

I think the phrase "lost Hitchcock film" is not entirely correct. This suggests that Hitchcock did the directing. But in fact he had written the script, did the production design, art direction, set decoration, and edited the film. It is not entirely clear to me whether he was also an assistant director or a second unit director. From what I understand there is quite a difference. After all, the assistant director's job is more like a managerial function, while the Second Unit director shoots his own part of the film in the style of the director, while he shoots his part of the film at a different location. It is generally assumed that Hitchcock was the assistant director of this film.

Alfred Hitchcock

But since Hitchcock did also at the editing, we see a little bit of what would make him so good and famous later; suspense. After 12 minutes, Nancy gets into an argument with her father. In the rhythm of the cutting we can already see the typical tension build-up that Hitchcock would use in his later films.

Reviews of "The White Shadow" written in 1924

Hitchcock wrote the screenplay to the unpublished novel "Children of Chance" written by Michael Morton. Morton mainly wrote plays that were also performed on Broadway. His first Broadway play was performed in 1897. Ever since, he has written Broadway plays, including "The Yellow Ticket" in 1914, which had 183 performances. His adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" was less successful. It remained with 24 performances in 1932. But he never notice it because he died a year earlier. Many of his plays have been turned into films over the years. Sometimes several times, including "The Yellow Ticket" and "Woman to Woman", both of which were filmed no less than three times.

Betty Compson and A.B. Imeson

"The White Shadow" was directed by Graham Cutts. A year earlier he had made the first film adaptation of Michael Morton's play "Woman to Woman". Hitchcock also was the screenwriter and assistant director and did the art direction on this production. Betty Compson, who plays both sisters in "The White Shadow", and Clive Brook, who plays Nancy's love interest in "The White Shadow", also played the lead roles in "Woman to Woman". This film was well received by the press and The White Shadow got mixed reviews. The Derby Daily Telegraph just gave away the ending of the film in a review, but The Hastings and St Leonards Observer praised the acting performance of Betty Compson and Clive Brook and the wonderful atmosphere and scenery. The review summarized the film in one word: "bizarre". That is a term that lures me to the cinema anyway.

Betty Compson and Maresco Marisini?

But the recovered part of the film stops before the "bizarre" part, in which the soul of the good sister takes possession of that of the rebellious sister, has begun.
The last scene that we see ends abruptly at an interesting moment. The good sister, who went looking for her father and sister, her rebellious sister and their father, are in one room, but they do not see or recognise each other. Very annoying this unintended cliffhanger (I don’t like intended cliffhangers as well, but that’s beside the point). Let's hope the rest of "The White Shadow" pops up somewhere in some forgotten archive.

Scene from "The White Shadow" (1924)