STUDIOCANAL is releasing a new boxset of early Alfred Hitchcock films to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the iconic director's birth.
Arriving on 16th December 2024, the boxset will feature 10 of Hitchcock's early films for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK. The films have been new restored and feature new scores.
From the silent film era to the first talkies, the 11 disc Blu-ray box set also contains a newly commissioned documentary ‘Becoming Hitchcock', exploring the director’s first sound picture ‘Blackmail', plus a 64-page booklet and poster.
Hitchcock's silent films including ‘The Ring' (1928), ‘The Farmer's Wife' (1929) and ‘Champagne' (1928) were greeted with great enthusiasm by critics and were heralded as evidence that British films had reached an international standard of artistry. Hitchcock's final silent film ‘The Manxman' (1930) was also a considerable commercial success.
In 1929, Hitchcock directed ‘Blackmail', the first British sound feature, hailed as a film which “used sound and dialogue with more flair and imagination than any Hollywood or European film of the time.” Hitchcock's inventive and expressionist use of sound demonstrated that the new technology opened a new realm of possibilities. In the wake of ‘Blackmail', there were searches for new challenges.
These included adaptations of two high profile plays, ‘Juno and the Paycock' (1930) and ‘The Skin Game' (1931), two more thrillers ‘Murder!' (1930), ‘Number Seventeen' (1932), and an intriguingly odd marital drama, the appropriately titled ‘Rich and Strange' (1932).
‘Hitchcock: The Beginning' is available to pre-order now.
