The White Shadow

Name: The White Shadow
Director: Graham Cutts
Genre: Drama
Released: 1924
Duration: 1 h 22 min
Cast: Betty Compson, Clive Brook, Henry Victor, A.B. Imeson, Olaf Hytten

1924 Drama 82 minutes Directed by Graham Cutts

About The White Shadow

Nancy Brent is quiet and conventional. Her twin Georgina will not stay inside that life, and their father's drinking follows. Both sisters draw the same man, Robin Field, who does not know they are two people. Betty Compson plays both. The reels that survive break off in a Paris boîte, as the sisters, Robin, and the father are about to see who is who.

Cast & crew

More about The White Shadow

Graham Cutts is the credited director. Alfred Hitchcock is listed as uncredited director and writer, and also as editor. Michael Balcon and Victor Saville produced. Woolf & Freedman Film Service released it in Britain in August 1923. Lewis J. Selznick's company released it in the United States on 13 October 1924 as White Shadows.

Themes

Two sisters, one face
A man who cannot tell them apart
A reel that stops in a Paris club
Nancy Brent
Georgina Brent
Robin Field
twins
Paris
multiple exposure

Background

Balcon and Saville were staffing Gainsborough with jobs that included Hitchcock's writing and cutting, before he directed on his own.

Making

The recovered footage stops before the Paris scene resolves. The twin effect is the multiple exposure, not a second actress.

Technique

Multiple exposure puts both of Compson's sisters in the same frame.

Music

Silent.

Preservation

Incomplete. The New Zealand Film Archive identified the nitrate in 2011. Park Road Post preserved it in 2012. What remains does not reach the end of the story.

Notes

Betty Compson plays Nancy Brent and Georgina Brent. Clive Brook is Robin Field. Henry Victor is Louis Chadwick. A. B. Imeson is Mr. Brent.
When both sisters are in the shot, the picture uses multiple exposure.
New Zealand projectionist Jack Murtagh kept reels. In 1989 his grandson Tony Osborne gave tinted nitrate to the New Zealand Film Archive.
On 3 August 2011 the archive identified the film in cans labeled Two Sisters and Unidentified American Film.
Park Road Post in Wellington preserved it in 2012, with the archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The National Film Preservation Foundation put the surviving reels on a 198-minute DVD in 2013, with six other features and seven shorts.

Scenes

Both sisters, both played by Betty Compson, share a frame by multiple exposure.
The surviving picture ends as the family and Robin meet in a Paris boîte.

Also available

Internet Archive (silent-the-white-shadow-aka-white-shadows)
National Film Preservation Foundation DVD (2013), with six other features and seven shorts