page_title: The Mountain Eagle
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: The Mountain Eagle / Production
caption_attribution_description: Obergurgl (below) and Hochgurgl (above) looking north.
context_page_description: The Mountain Eagle is a 1926 British-German silent film, and Alfred Hitchcock's second as director, following The Pleasure Garden. The film, a romantic melodrama set in Kentucky, is about a widower who jealously competes with his crippled son and a man he loathes over the affections of a schoolteacher. The film was mostly produced at the Emelka Film studios in Munich, Germany in autumn of 1925, with exterior scenes shot in the village of Obergurgl in the State of Tyrol, Austria. Production was plagued with problems, including the destruction of a village roof and Hitchcock experiencing altitude sickness. Due to producing the film in Germany, Hitchcock had more directorial freedom than he would have had in England, and he was influenced by German cinematic style and technique.
  The film was released in Germany in May 1926 and screened for its British distributors in October 1926. It was met with disapproval and it was not until after the success of Hitchcock's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog that the film was released in the UK in May 1927. The film received mixed reviews and Hitchcock himself told François Truffaut he was relieved that the film was lost.
context_section_description: Both The Pleasure Garden and The Mountain Eagle were produced in co-operation with Emelka Film Studios in Munich, Germany. The film was mostly shot at Emelka in Munich in the fall of 1925, and the film exteriors were shot on location in Obergurgl, in what is now the municipality of Sölden in the State of Tyrol in southwestern Austria, the Ötztal Alps standing in for the mountains and hollows of Kentucky. Due to producing the film in Germany, Hitchcock had more directorial freedom than he would have had in England, and influences in the technique and style of German cinema are evident in his early works.
  Production was plagued with problems. Poor weather during the location shoot was a constant source of trouble, and Hitchcock and the crew had an uneasy relationship with the locals. Hitchcock ordered the clearance of snow from a meadow and ordered the local volunteer fire brigade to blast it away, causing the roof of a nearby building to collapse. The mayor demanded compensation of one shilling, but Hitchcock gave the woman who owned the house two shillings to cover the repair work and the inconvenience. Hitchcock offended the locals by refusing to stay at the village inn, and when he was taken ill with altitude sickness, he blamed the sickness on his reaction to the guttural sound of their accents.
caption: The village of Obergurgl in the State of Tyrol, where the exterior footage of the film was shot
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