“A MARVEllOUSlY DRAMATIC SUBJECT”: HITCHCOCK’S TITANIC PROJECT

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Titanic film that Alfred Hitchcock was scheduled to make as his first Hollywood production in 1939, and considers, with the help of archival research, both why it was not made, and what form it might have taken. Its central strategy is the creation of a scene-by-scene shadow version of the unmade film, using shipboard sequences from a wide range of films that Hitchcock did make between 1926 and 1944, and constructing a narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end (shipwreck and rescue). While this strategy is a playful one, it also aims to make serious points about Hitchcock’s affinity with the subject, linking it closely to – for instance – the pair of films he made shortly before his move to Hollywood (The Lady Vanishes, 1938) and shortly after (Foreign correspondent, 1940), both of which put their characters through severe ordeals in the course of a journey. Finally, it is argued that the Titanic story, whose ending we know in advance, is not at all at odds with the concept of suspense as Hitchcock understood and practised it.