“It’s the story of a movie that never saw the light of day – the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie that no one has seen and really doesn’t know much about” : thus begins the article of The Independent about the mysterious Mrs Peabody. Dubbed “Number 13”, as it would be the thirteenth film Hitchcock has worked on, and his very first as a director, it could not be completed. But the fact that he cannot be found arouses the curiosity of historians and fans of the director.
Very often, “Number 13” remains a blind spot in the career of the master of suspense: “Several biographies of Hitchcock don’t even mention it, others only mention it in passing.” However, it could constitute “the missing link in the history of Hitchcock” as the London newspaper tells us.
A lack of funding
In the early 1920s, Alfred Hitchcock began working in the London studios of the American company Famous Players-Lasky (which would later become Paramount), and was present on film sets. “He designed the cartoons [les intertitres d’un cinéma encore muet]took care of the artistic direction and solved the problems that arose here and there”, details the British daily, which allowed him “to learn more about directing than most of his peers”.
At the dawn of a p