Graham Cutts

His full name was Jack Graham Cutts. As he was fourteen years older than Hitchcock and with great experience too, working with him must have been a fantastic opportunity to learn plenty for the young Alfred. The prodigy didn't seem to be sharing this sentiment, but let's start from the beginning.

In the silent film era, Cutts was widely acknowledged as the greatest British director. As opposed to some others which also competed for the spot, he made both the audience and the critics love him.

Even in his golden years, it wasn't always sunshine and roses: some of his movies flopped commercially and some others were not as popular among critics. But when he managed to hit the sweet spot, jaws were dropping! He was exactly what the British needed and were looking for in the early XX century: a British director that could be compared to top Hollywood ones with absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

It wasn't all about morale though: the British movie industry was in a very poor condition around the 1915-1925 period and needed a spark, a local genius. Studios were looking to convince the audience that their own cinema is worth seeing and Cutts' work was a proof of that. Sparks began flying, and to make things sweeter, soon Hitchcock was to start his own show...

Cutts' quickly establishing cult status halted when the sound was added to the picture and early talkies emerged. It has proven to be a stumbling block for the director, and one that he couldn't overcome. His style of work could not fit into the new format and he couldn't rearrange himself to transfer his best qualities into it.

It wasn't of course a rare story - enormous amount of different people involved in early movies had problems adjusting to the new requirements and many didn't make it. Actress Pola Negri, actors John Gilbert and Reginald Denny all found it very hard. Director George Pearson had some moderate successes, but even in his best talkies he struggled with the format.

There were plenty of success stories too, like Greta Garbo, or Raymond Griffith, who could barely speak due to throat condition which made talkies a complete no-go, but his love for the cinema pushed him to find a different angle. And so he became a writer, and after more than a decade of this line of work, again switched to become a successful associate producer.

Cutts wasn't so fortunate though. After leaving Gainsborough, he made movies for more than a decade but they were just shadows of his former glory.

Comparisons to American movies looked particularly good for Cutts because he spoke a similar language to that of Hollywood. His movies were a little infantile because the story was often undercooked to make room for sugar.

His tracking shots were extremely good-looking. Analytic editing which was the Hollywood's bread and butter at the time Cutts incorporated into his style and was very swift and effective with it (here is a wonderful explanation of analytic editing). The director's camera angles were dramatic and sensational.

The word 'infantile' is a good description of his style, but it obviously has a negative connotation when speaking about an adult (and Cutts was one). The man didn't care about realism of the story that much. In fact, he completely ignored that way of planning. Instead, he used every opportunity to show off, to impress with high quality presentation which fuelled his scenes.

And he was so talented and good with this style that the story didn't seem lackluster even though it often was. The movies were satisfying, pleasant to watch, and it would be a big oversight to say that because stories had their flaws, that the films were simple affairs, because the craft with which they were made was amazing.

In her wonderful book Reframing British Cinema, 1918-1928: Between Restraint and Passion, Christine Gledhill writes: In terms of pictorialism, Cutts’s particular contribution lay in an instinctive sense of the power of the look, not only as a means of controlling others but as generator of projected internalised visions.

Cutts was on route to become marine engineer, but in 1909 he chose a new path for himself and started working as a film exhibitor. At one point, his friend Herbert Wilcox decided to start making his own movies. The two came to an agreement and Cutts became Wilcox's director. In 1919, the works on their first common picture The Wonderful Story have started.

The cooperation didn't last long, but luck worked in Graham's favor. Soon, three influential and talented people in the industry: Balcon, Freedman & Saville formed a new film company. They ran wild with the naming and their brand was dubbed "Balcon, Freedman & Saville". They concluded that Cutts is who they want to be their main director.

The first one was "Woman to Woman". It was Cutts' initiative, as it was originally a play by Michael Morton. The director thought it was a great movie material and bought the rights from Morton (a very popular practice at times when theater was much closer to the cinema than it is today). Next, he went to the three studio owners suggesting to make a movie based on it. Saville went to the United States to personally hire Betty Compson. She was offered £1,000 per week of filming and signed a two-film contract.

The £30,000 budget that the three company owners managed to put together wasn't enough for flashy stuff and they had to cut corners. They could only afford renting stages, for which purpose they chose Islington Studios. It so happened that Alfred Hitchcock was working there.

He caught Michael Balcon's eye and they had to make use of studio stuff to save money anyway. Given that the promising young boy was skilled in doing many jobs, getting him on board was a no-brainer for Balcon. On a set of Cutts' first movie with Hitchcock, Alfred started working closely with another fresh prospect who later became his wife - Alma Reville.

The movie became a huge commercial hit, so the next project was instantly green-lighted and works began quickly. The result was "The White Shadow" (which by the way was thought to be gone forever until recently half of it has been found and restored). Critics didn't like it and the audience largely ignored it.

In 1924, after another commercially unsuccessful movie titled "The Prude's Fall" (also directed by Cutts with Hitchcock by his side), Balcon, Freedman & Saville called it quits. That didn't stop the pair of directors from continuing their cooperation, as they made another two movies together: The Passionate Adventure and The Blackguard.

After the advent of talkies, he failed to prosper even though he was at the top of the Gainsborough pyramid. His another string of movies was for British International Pictures, but like said before, their quality was nowhere near his earlier works.

Alfred Hitchcock was very ambitious and talented, so he was quickly put to work. But when there was no more doubt that great things await this young man, the main director became jealous.

Graham Cutts wasn't an easy character to begin with. Many of his friends spoke of his arrogance, cockiness and narcissism. He was hostile and disrespectful to the people who worked below him. The two most vocal about it were Alfred Hitchcock and Adrian Brunel.

For Hitch, the breaking point was their famous trip to Berlin. After Cutts became famous, he got star-strucked and started chasing women left and right, constantly bragging about his sexual conquests while doing so. Hitchcock complained that he had to cover for him. One time, he got stuck with an Estonian lover in Calais on a way to England, because she didn't have the necessary travel papers. He had them, but instead of leaving her and going solo to keep schedule, he decided to stay with her. That forced the crew to turn the entire schedule on its head. And in this business, delay bleeds money heavily.

It was somewhat marred because director Graham Cutts was not our cup of tea. He didn’t appreciate Hitch, he knew very little, and actually we carried him. Then, he resented it. He was jealous of Hitch, who was intuitive and perfectly understood everything technical. Cutts was ready to depend on others, but not to share credit.

Alma Reville

The Prude's Fall was their last movie together with Cutts as director and Hitchcock as assistant director. Hasted and half-cooked, it expresses well the condition in which their relationship was at the time. Later, Graham briefly helped during the filming of Alfred's 39 Steps, but it wasn't a burying the hatchet gesture (more in trivia below).

Graham Cutts got back what he deserved and then some of what he didn't though too. Earlier mentioned pair of Hitchcock and Brunel soon became at least as popular as Cutts (Brunel for a short while - he too drowned when talkies came along) and they started talking plenty about life under Graham.

Alfred went further and "ganged up" with his wife and attacked his talent as well. Both claimed many times that they helped build his career more than he helped build theirs. Hitch stated he was doing plenty of full-time directing through the director, for which he never even got complimented by Cutts and that by himself Cutts was a mediocre and incompetent director.

In this case though, the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle and the proof is for anyone to see. Hitchcock's last statement is clearly not true, for example. Graham Cutts' silent movies without Hitch were very good and high quality and it doesn't take a movie critic to see it.

What's more, many critics who understand films better than we do argue that the young director must have learned a lot from his older colleague as some of his characteristic style seems to be influenced by Graham's.

It is of course hard to blame the great director if that was the case. When being constantly put down, ignored and thrown obstacles at, it's tough to notice the actual positive impact that the person had on his life. And even if Hitchcock has indeed learned nothing directly from him, those experiences have built him as a director and have catapulted his career. He went pretty quick from a card boy to working along the UK's greatest and that work along Cutts has opened him a road for a long and wonderful career.

Graham Cutts has paid for his sins thanks to the mounths of Hitchcock and others. Coupled with his average late movies, his reputation has been irreversibly damaged. Today, when we hear about Cutts, all too often we only hear about him in the context of Alfred Hitchcock (as is true with this article as well) and not as a wonderful director that he was on his own. Fortunately, lately this is slowly starting to change and scholars around the world are rediscovering his older movies and appreaciate their craft more and more.

Patricia was a daughter of the director Graham Cutts and the actress Robin Coles. Just like her mother, she decided to go the acting route.

Her biggest movie roles were the supporting ones. The most popular of them was her brief appearance in North by Northwest when she twice screams for Cary Grant to stop. Under the guidance of Hitchcock, she worked two more times, in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes: Flight to the East (1958) and Body in the Barn (1964). Few other popular movies that Patricia starred in: I Was a Male Bride, The Tingler and The Man Who Loved Redheads.

Despite above-average looks and a surname that has surely opened many doors for her, she failed to break big time and make even one memorable supporting act. That pushed her out of the big screen and into the TV screen, where she fared better. TV has always attracted and accepted worse actors than the big screen (part of why it is called big screen), so it was easier for her to get a job, but she couldn't rebound back

In September 1974, at the age of 48 she took her own life - a combination of alcohol and barbiturates sent her to the other side. An investigation has concluded that she combined the two with intent to kill herself.

Some argue that the fact that Hitchcock let her perform for him is a proof that the Hitchcock-Cutts relationship was not as tense it was made to appear, but since Hitch and Cutts themselves provided majority of ammunition for the opposite argument, it's doubtful.