The Mountain Eagle (1926) watch online

The Mountain Eagle is a 1926 lost film directed by Alfred Hitchcock following his debut in The Pleasure Garden. The silent film, a romantic drama set in Kentucky, is about a widower (Bernhard Goetzke) who jealously competes with his crippled son (John F. Hamilton) and a man he loathes (Malcolm Keen) over the affections of a schoolteacher (Nita Naldi). The film was mostly produced at the Emelka Film studios in Munich, Germany in autumn of 1925, with exterior scenes shot in the village of Obergurgl in the State of Tyrol, Austria. Production was plagued with problems, including the destruction of a village roof and Hitchcock experiencing altitude sickness. Due to producing the film in Germany, Hitchcock had more directorial freedom than he would have had in England, and he was influenced by German cinematic style and technique.

The film was released in Germany in May 1926 and screened for its British distributors in October 1926. It was met with disapproval and it was not until after the success of Hitchcock's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog that the film was released in the UK in May 1927. The film received mixed reviews and Hitchcock himself told François Truffaut he was relieved that the film was lost. Six surviving stills of The Mountain Eagle are reproduced in Truffaut's book, and further stills have been found. In 2012, a set of 24 still photographs was found in an archive of one of Hitchcock's close friends. The Cine Tirol Film Commission has described it as "the most wanted film in the world"; the British Film Institute has the film on the top of their BFI 75 Most Wanted list of missing films, and is actively searching for it.

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