When The Blackguard required a scene outside Milan cathedral, Hitchcock built an exact replica of one tiny corner of the doorway, rather than attempting a more extensive yet less authentic set. 'All that matters is what you see on the screen.' Hitchcock lapped up Murnau's advice. 'What you see on the set does not matter,' Murnau told him.

When Hitchcock arrived there, FW Murnau was filming his silent meisterwerk, Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), and this young English wannabe leapt at the chance to watch the great German auteur at work.

In the 1920s, Babelsberg was Germany's Hollywood, the most modern movie studios in the world. The Lodger was a big hit, and Hitchcock's German films were soon forgotten, but as this exhibition shows, his time in Berlin had a profound and lasting effect. He then returned to London, where he directed his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. Improbably for a director who's remembered for taut psychological thrillers such as Vertigo, his directorial debut, The Pleasure Garden, was a jolly romp about chorus girls.Īfter The Pleasure Garden, Hitchcock directed another film in Germany, Der Bergadler (The Mountain Eagle), now sadly lost. He also worked as the scriptwriter and art director on the silent melodrama, and his work caught the eye of the German company Emelka, who hired him to make a movie of his own. Hitchcock came to Berlin in 1924, in his mid-20s, to work as the assistant director on an Anglo-German co-production called The Blackguard at Berlin's Babelsberg studios.

Shadow of a doubt (1943) storyboards