It is finally possible to see the colours of a silent Hitchcock! The National Film&Television Archive in collaboration with Soho Images has restored the original colours utilising the techniques of imbibition and toning of the time. The results which we were able to admire some months ago in London on a test of three hundred metres were splendid, this evening’s projection will allow us to see them in their completeness.

“Beginning with a simple plot I have always been animated by the desire to present my ideas for the first time in a purely visual form. I shot fifteen minutes of a late winter evening in London. It is five twenty and the first shot of the film is the face of a blond girl who is screaming. Here’s how I photographed her. I took a pane of glass. I put the girl’s head on the glass, I then spread her hair so that it covered the shot, then I lit it from below so as to emphasise her blond hair. At this point there is a break, and I pass to a luminous sign which displays publicity for a music magazine ‘This evening: Goldilocks’. The sign reflects on the water. The girl from before has drowned; she is pulled out and laid on the street…[…]. In the clubs, the people become aware of the event which is then announced on the radio and heard by the listeners… This man only kills women. Invariably blondes… The news is broadcast on all the media, the evening paper is printed and sold on the streets… What is happening in the city? The blondes are terrified… The brunettes joke about it… Women talk about it to their hairdressers… Some blondes want black curls to put under their hats… I think that psychologically the idea of the handcuffs takes us far… Being tied to something… We are in the reign of fetishism”.

Alfred Hitchcock